


Dreams Were the Days You Never Lived

by tonightless



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Drug Use, Friends to Lovers, Homelessness, Homophobia, Inexplicit, M/M, Minor Character Death, Prostitution, Sandwiches
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-16
Updated: 2013-07-26
Packaged: 2017-11-29 13:00:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 29,429
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/687237
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tonightless/pseuds/tonightless
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Arthur needs a saviour. Merlin is ready and waiting.</p><p>Contained herein: hugs, bad Harry Potter jokes, corny poetry, sandwiches, angst and pain and dark alleys and a thousand regrets and tea (with three sugars) and ducks and kisses and too many things left unsaid, and maybe – just maybe – a little bit of hope.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

>  
> 
> All feedback is welcome. ♥
> 
>  
> 
> ****  
> ೋ  
>   
> 
>  
> 
> _“If you be my star, I'll be your sky;_  
>  _you can hide underneath me and come out at night._  
>  _When I turn jet black and you show off your light…_  
>  _I live to let you shine.”_  
>  _—Gregory and the Hawk, Boats and Birds_  
> 

  **ೋ**

╔════════════════════╗

  
 **RIBBONS**  
  
  
╚════════════════════╝

 

****

****

**_15 th November, 2006_ **

Merlin sees him in the distance, sprawled on the bench in his too-short jeans and too-big parka with a paper poppy still pinned to the lapel even though Remembrance Day was four days ago. A spiral of cigarette smoke twists away into the city air, up past hollow cheeks and golden lashes, up past the brooding oaks framing the path, up into the grey sheet of sky.

He looks peaceful. Calm. He is limp like a ragdoll, and maybe Merlin should just turn back, walk away, leave him alone, put the sandwich in the bin and – and _go_. But Merlin stays. Merlin keeps walking. He has the sandwich, encased in cardboard and plastic, clutched in unsteady hands. He bought it from Tesco for two quid and it will have bread that droops and wilted lettuce and a thin coating of garlicky mayonnaise and bacon that’s overcooked but he needs to reach out to the blonde boy in the parka who sits on that bench every day between 3 and 5 pm. Sometimes the boy watches the ducks on the river, a ghost’s smile hovering around his mouth, cigarette clamped between chapped lips. Most the time he sits back, closes his eyes, smokes – sometimes humming, sometimes in silence.

Merlin can’t bear the silence. It reeks of defeat. Fragility. And Merlin looks at him, looks at this boy in his too-short jeans and too-big parka and he feels… chained, bound to him by invisible ribbons. As if… as if this boy is _his_ , his to protect and befriend and guide and save even though he doesn’t even know his name and—

Three more steps. He reaches the bench. Swallows. His eyes dart from the boy to the gate to the bin to the sandwich then back to the boy. Merlin speaks – “uh… excuse me?” – and the boy’s eyes flicker open.

The ribbons pull tighter.

The gaze that meanders over Merlin’s denim jacket and neck and face is bleary, blue-eyed; as familiar as his mother's touch and the linen of his bed sheets and the tinny voice on the Underground that repeats station after station, morning after morning when Merlin is on the way to work. The sandwich shudders in his grip.

The boy’s mouth moulds into an ‘O’ of surprise (the cigarette dips precariously, but endures); his brow creases into a ‘V’ of candid confusion. Merlin thrusts the sandwich forward.

“’S for you,” he says, except it catches in his throat and tumbles, cracked, into the air. The boy squints up at him through rays of winter sun, questioning, unsure… and absolutely unknowing that this is where it would all begin.

  

 

• • • • • •

**4 YEARS EARLIER**

 

 

 

 ** _October 19th, 2002_**  
  
Merlin has seen hundreds of families flit in and out of the ICU. There have been fathers bouncing toddlers in their laps and mothers stroking their children’s hair with soothing murmurs, and brothers and sisters who have taken vigils together, one awake and one sleeping, and grandparents who have listened to their grandchildren through hazes of morphine and boyfriends and girlfriends who held hands and pressed kisses to the other’s brow with watery smiles.

But this man and this boy don’t fit. The boy sits next to the gurney and his father’s hands are locked around his shoulder blades in what must be a reassuring gesture, but it’s all wrong. The lines of the boy’s body are sharp with tension. The man is stiff-backed. Silent. Disconnected.

Merlin coughs from the doorway. The man’s head swivels towards him, but he says nothing – only glares. His face is familiar: hard, unsmiling, wizened. Merlin blinks. Hasn’t he seen this guy on TV? He remembers being slouched next to Will when he chucked popcorn at this face on the screen, remembers elbowing him hard and mumbling, “God’s sake, Will, just ‘cause you’re a bloody anarchist…”

“Check-up,” Merlin says eventually, hands fluttering loosely in the air. The man turns away. Merlin slinks in like a scorned child.

God’s sake! He’s on home turf, knows what he’s doing (even if he is just an intern), and yet his skin is crawling with goosebumps. Who the hell is this guy? Some jumped-up M-fucking-P, that's what Will would say—

The man’s gaze swings towards him and for one horrifying moment Merlin is sure the man just read his mind, but then his brain kicks into gear and he realises he is staring. Hastily, Merlin unhooks the clipboard at the end of the bed. A quick scan over Gaius’ notes tells him the patient is Yvette de Bois, 42 years old, with severe head trauma after a car crash. She has been comatose since Friday.

Her husband, then, and her son. Merlin risks another peek at the visitors. Definitely her son. Funny how Merlin can see the resemblance, even with Yvette’s head swathed in bandages.

Merlin turns to check her vitals. The room is silent aside from Yvette’s mechanical, grating breaths, forced out of her by the ventilator, and the soft beeps and clicks from the heart monitor.

Merlin scrawls a few notes on the clipboard for professionalism’s sake and then checks the levels of glucose, saline, morphine and electrolytes in the IV drips. He checks their flow rates against those in Gaius’ notes. He checks that the IV lines taped to the arm and chest are secure, the connecting hubs and the nasogastric tube fixed. He checks Yvette’s vitals again, the man’s eyes piercing him the whole time, and flicks through the CT scans of her brain for something to do.

“Well?”

The man's voice is like ice, cold and unrelenting. Out of the corner of Merlin's eye the boy stiffens, ever so slightly. His blonde head is bowed so low Merlin can only see his mouth – a thin, hard gash, taut with worry.

The man is still glaring.

“Miss de Bois’ condition is critical but stable,” Merlin says, trying not to squirm like an insect under a microscope. “The blood transfusion was effective and she is responding well to the ventilator, but if she continues to be dependent on it she’ll be given a tracheotomy – that’s when a tube is inserted into the windpipe through the front of the throat…”

The man narrows his eyes. Merlin’s grip tightens on the clipboard. _Do not babble,_ he thinks. _Do not babble do_ not _babble oh Christ on a bi_ —

“At the moment we can only keep her as healthy as possible, due to her comatose state and ‘cause all the surgery’s been done. Erm, Gaius has already set a program of physical therapy for your wife.” Thunder starts to brew on the man’s brow but Merlin babbles on. “Um, it prevents bedsores? They’re skin wounds caused by lying in one position for too long. A nurse has to move her every two to three hours. And…”

Merlin takes a deep breath, looks at his notes, and ends his volley with, “and the electrolytes and PTN are doing their bit, they’re. Um. Yeah. That’s it?”

Both of them are staring now – the man and his boy. The father looks slightly pained, stuffed into a sharp navy suit that will have cost more than Merlin's hefty DVD collection; as if annoyed his glare hasn’t incinerated Merlin on the spot, only melted him into a pile of incoherent gloop. His son is pale and wide-eyed, blinking owlishly at him. Like Merlin just saved the planet from the zombie apocalypse in  _Night of the Living Dead_ , or something. It’s uncomfortable, the boy’s stare. Too much awe. All he’d done was—

 _Oh_. Merlin winces when he hooks the clipboard back into place. All he’d done was spew nonsense at the feet of one of the most powerful men in the country. And he hadn’t chucked ‘sir’ in once.

Fuck. Was it too late to claim Quakerism?

“I wasn’t aware her care had been entrusted to…” The man’s gaze slides up and down Merlin’s skinny frame. _An imbecile_ , Merlin reads in his grey eyes, but he says, “… _someone_ other than Dr. Wilson.”

“Er, well, Gai – I mean, Dr. Wilson sent me today. Just for the check-up. He’s needed elsewhere in the unit at the moment. Sir.”

A beat of silence.

“Get out,” the man says, perfectly composed. Merlin bows on instinct, and then feels like a twat, so nods instead and the man is _still_ glaring at him, blank-faced. With mumbled apologies and placating gestures, Merlin flees to the staffroom and doesn’t calm down until Gwen makes him four cups of coffee and Lance buys him a packet of Haribo Tangfastics from the hospital shop.

                                                                                             

• • • • • •

 

**_November, 2002_ **

Merlin takes a deep breath before he turns the corner. Above his head is a plastic sign with **ROOMS 1401 – 1419** stamped on it in white. The arrow below the text points to the ceiling. _Dead ahead, Merlin!_ , it says. _Enjoy your trip!_

Swallowing, Merlin wipes his hands on his overalls. He is never going to let Gaius catch him smoking in the staff car park again. Or maybe he needs to read up some more on trigger spells. His was bloody awful; he hadn’t sensed Gaius coming until he was nearly upon him, and all he could do was whip the fag from his mouth, grind it into the pavement, and hope Gaius didn’t spot it. Except Gaius did spot it, and arched an eyebrow Merlin’s way, and sent him off to Room 1415. Excuses of terrifying MPs not accepted.

Merlin is outside Room 1412 now, but his footsteps are muffled by the plush carpet. Uther can’t have heard him coming. He could always turn back and get Gwen to—

No, Gwen would be at the coffee machine, brewing enough coffee to flood London; all for his poor, frayed nerves when he returned. And she’d have told Lance to get two packets of Tangfastics this time, and a big bar of Cadbury’s too. Giving her Uther to face was a breach of the unspoken rules of friendship. Although she knew more about Mr. M-fuckin’-P than Merlin had – his name, for one, and some of his extreme policies.

1413\. 1414… is someone talking in there? Merlin peers through the window. The lights are out; the patient sound asleep. He draws back, strains his ears, catches the low voice and soft words. Disbelieving, his gaze sweeps towards his destination.

Room 1415.

The door is ajar. Creeping forward, his stupid work shoes sinking into the carpet, Merlin pokes his head into the room. By the gurney is the blonde boy, just like before – but there is no sign of Uther. It shows in the boy’s posture: he is slumped forwards in his chair, cheek pillowed on the duvet, and he has Yvette’s hand in his own.

“…I did my French oral today, mum. At school. Part of my GCSE grade. I read it to you yesterday – you always used to help with my pronunciation, remember? I got Kay to help this time but he’s not French like you. He wasn’t even half as good. But it went okay.”

He pauses, and then adds, forlorn: “Hope so, anyway.”

Merlin shrinks back into the corridor. His heart is hammering in his chest, traitorous, manic. He feels like he’s cracked open a skull and peered into a soul, into something so intimate and fragile he daren't touch it. This isn’t his moment and he should leave, leave their moment untouched and unbroken but half of him... half of him wants to reach out, show this boy the love he’s seen in the ICU. He wants to make him smile, wants to see his eyes light up, wants to speak to him with soft words too.

So Merlin darts back a good ten feet and then marches forward. He stamps on the ground hard enough for shockwaves to ripple up his legs, making his footfall as loud as he can. He even hums a little; and when he reaches the door to 1415 again, the boy is looking warily over his shoulder.

“Check-up,” Merlin says. The boy nods slowly, fingers curling further around Yvette’s hand. He watches, hawk-like, as Merlin enters, lopes over to the ventilator and the heart monitor, and checks Yvette’s vitals. He watches Merlin check the levels of glucose, saline, morphine and electrolytes in the IV drips. He watches Merlin check their flow rates against those in Gaius’ notes, watches him check that the IV lines taped to the arm and chest are secure, the connecting hubs and the nasogastric tube fixed. He watches Merlin check Yvette’s vitals again.

He watches Merlin move her from side to side, careful and delicate; watches as he lifts her limbs, one by one, except her right arm, so he doesn't have to let go of his mum's hand.

“There’s been no change,” Merlin says when he is done. The boy doesn’t reply. His grey t-shirt is rumpled, his cheek creased from when he was sprawled on the bed. Merlin smiles gently at him before he ducks his head, and the boy blinks with surprise with those innocent blue eyes.

Merlin signs the sheet by the ventilator to confirm the patient received their check-up; is sliding the pen into its slot when—

“You like Avril Lavigne?”

“Hm?”

Merlin looks up. Uncertainty flickers across the boy’s face, uncertainty and disbelief, but they solidify into defiance as he says: “You were humming. The one that’s on the radio all the time – _he was a skater boy, she said see you later boy_ …”

“You know the words?” Merlin raises his eyebrows, the corners of his mouth twitching.

“It’s on the radio all the time,” the boy repeats, defensive, and scowls down at his hand, entwined with Yvette’s. His face softens, melting into something raw and sad and a little rough at the edges, and he curves his thumb over Yvette’s pale knuckles with enough tenderness to bring a lump up to Merlin’s throat.

He leaves, door clicking shut behind him. And then he walks as fast as hospital policy will allow until he’s in the staffroom, where he seizes a packet of Tangfastics from a bewildered Lance. He backtracks, up to the third floor, left, right, left again and then _fuck it_ , he thinks, and he is running, running—

The plastic sign with **ROOMS 1401 – 1419** stamped on it in white whizzes by overhead. But when Merlin reaches Room 1415, Tangfastics in hand, the boy is gone.

 

• • • • • •

 

Merlin keeps an eye out all the same. He loiters on the third floor as much as he can the next day (despite Morgause's glares from the nurse's station) and at two pm finds the boy sat by the gurney. Merlin reaches for the Tangfastics squished into the pocket of his trousers, but something holds him back. It’s that feeling again, the feeling he shouldn’t be lingering where he doesn't belong. He sees the boy is holding Yvette’s hand like before, holding it close; can hear him talking…

“…I have no idea what to get. You know what she’s like – bloody expensive taste – and she’s a girl. What am I s’posed to get a girl for their birthday? And this is Morgana, mum. _Morgana_. If I screw up she'll mock me to hell and back…”

…talking, talking, talking until his voice is hoarse…

“…you look better today, mum. Maybe I’m just getting my hopes up, but I think you look better. You’re not so pale anymore. I… I want you to wake up, but – I mean, take all the time you need. I’ll still be here.”

Merlin leaves the Tangfastics on the floor in the doorway. It isn’t his moment. It never has been.

Still, he watches from afar. He sees the boy nearly stand on the garish packaging of the Tangfastics, pause, and scoop them up, puzzled; sees him tuck them into his backpack and swells with happiness. Over the weeks Merlin sees the boy come and go and come and go, sometimes in jeans and a t-shirt, sometimes in his school uniform, sometimes being steered by Uther, sometimes alone. Mostly alone.

But Merlin wasn’t at the hospital when Arthur visited his mother for the last time.

He never saw Arthur arrive, dressed in jeans, a button-down, a parka that was a little too big for him, lugging a duffel bag in his wake. He never saw how Arthur clutched her hand, feverish, and raised it to his lips, and whispered against the dry skin, as if his breath would revive her.

Merlin never heard how Arthur begged for her to wake up because Uther knew now, and he had nowhere to go because Morgie was at uni and Yvette’s flat was locked and chained and God knows what else.

Merlin never heard Arthur tell his mother to wake up because she said she’d always be there when he needed her and he needed her now because he didn’t know what to do and _why wouldn’t she just wake up?_

Merlin never saw how Arthur cried. Merlin never knew how Arthur sat for hours by her side, rocking back and forth. Arthur was praying by then, praying to a God he didn’t believe in, praying for a miracle, a sign, for his mother to awaken. Still Yvette did not stir, lost in calm repose; and at six thirty pm, November 15th, 2002, visiting time was over.

Arthur left. But that night, instead of getting back on the train to Oxford, he crossed the car park, stepped onto Albion St., and, shivering, began to walk in the sheets of rain.

 

 

 

* * *

  **ೋ**

 


	2. Chapter 2

  **ೋ**

╔════════════════════╗

  
 **GOODBYE**  
  
  
╚════════════════════╝

 

 

 

 

**_December, 2002_ **

Golden circles of light dapple the rain-slick streets, thrown onto the tarmac by Christmas lights strung lantern to lantern. Buses rumble past, red and gleaming. Taxis glide in and out of the taxi rank like a well-oiled machine – in, out, in, out, passing weary businessmen and a gaggle of girls tottering along the pavement, the gang of punks up by the museum who wolf-whistle and catcall at their drunken behinds and a trembling boy, huddled in a doorway, the sleeves of his parka rolled up to his wrists because it’s too big.

Big Ben tolls seven pm as the girls stumble past Arthur, faces flushed, make-up smeared by rain and sweat. He eyes the handbags swinging from their shoulders; envious fingers curl around the empty space in his pocket. Penniless. His last fiver was spent yesterday on a kebab thick with grease – his first meal in three days – and 250 ml of precious water. The kebab vendor had dropped pennies into Arthur’s palm afterwards, pennies that lit the tips of his ears an ashamed red.

Arthur had shoved the coins into a collection box for _Help For Heroes_ and stalked away, eyes watery, the heat of his kebab searing mockingly into the palm of his hand.

Fucking penniless. The notes in his wallet had barely lasted a month and Uther drained his bank account the moment his backside hit the pavement. Arthur had found an ATM a few streets away from St. Julian’s Private Hospital, back on November 15th; slid his debit card into the slot, punched in his PIN whilst the heavens growled and grumbled.

A bright green alien figure had glowered back at him, shocking his heart still: _£0000.00_.

Penniless.

Alone.

The girls reel round the corner. Big Ben falls silent. The punks roar with laughter at a joke their big guy cracked, stamping grubby Docs onto the pavement. They hang around for what feels like years; smoking, drinking, flinging rude gestures at those trapped by the traffic lights their end of the street until the big guy’s pissed enough to make Arthur a deal, and he’s bundling a crumpled twenty pound note into Arthur’s hand, jeans still unbuttoned, when Big Ben serenades the midnight hour.

A few days later and Arthur deletes all the content from his phone; sells it for thirty quid to a doped-up girl he finds outside _The Rising Sun_. He makes plans to sell his Rolex for more (a sixteenth birthday present from his dad, silver and heavy and as cold as Uther so often was), but loses it to a scruffy bloke with an Irish drawl and a wild swagger. He crumples next to Arthur one day, a plastic bag stuffed with whiskey locked in a fist, and shares it all with careless abandon. In the beginning Arthur tries to hold onto what dignity he has left but the man - is he a man? He can't be more than 18 - presses bottle after bottle into his hand and the glass just… welds itself to his skin.

The whiskey’s cheap, not like the upmarket slosh Arthur once bought with his dad’s money. But it’s easy. Easy to spiral into the warm fuzz of oblivion.

It’s all too easy as they talk and drink and talk and drink down their stupid little back alley. Arthur's tipsy at first, tipsy but telling himself he's got it in control until suddenly he hasn't - and he's drunk. That's how he'll remember it later, anyway: as something as jarring and abrupt as being flung into a pool of ice-cold water. Hands, now; light and adept, sliding under his shirt, trailing down his waist…

…whisky-scented breath on his cheek, muggy and…

…thumbs on his hipbones…

…teeth clacking against his…

…a stirring in the crotch of his trousers…

…and there are blurs smearing and smears blurring and cartwheels of colour. A slurred “’hanks, mate”. The heavy weight of the Rolex lifting off his arm, bleary and distant when he is drowning in thoughtlessness. Morgana’s face is flickering across his vision like a badly broadcast image, flickering until it morphs into the punk guy with his eyes rolled back into his head and his mouth agape, frozen at the peak, and his growl of  “yer wanna blow me for twenty?” ricochets round Arthur’s pounding skull:

… _twenty, twenty, twenty…_

When Arthur wakes up, sore and sluggish in the cold, the Irishman is gone and he is sprawled in a ring of empty whisky bottles like a fucking wino. Lying on some anonymous street like he’s homeless; that’s the next thing to pop into his head, and it digs so deep he laughs until he cries. 

 

• • • • • •

 

 

 

**_16 th December, 2002_**  

 

> **_  
> _**
> 
> * * *
> 
> **  
> PENDRAGON’S MARRIAGE AT END**
> 
> **by Freya Lake  
> **
> 
> **. . . .**
> 
> _It has been revealed that Uther Pendragon, the Labour MP notorious for brutal policies against magic users, had sanctioned a divorce from his wife, Yvette de Bois, more than three years ago. The divorce will be finalised in just two day’s time (the 18 th). Reasons behind the divorce are still unclear._
> 
> _Uther Pendragon and Yvette de Bois, head of the cosmetics company_ La Femme _, were wed in 1981 at a private ceremony. In an interview in 1984, Pendragon revealed they met at a charity function and described her as “wonderful and truly devoted”._
> 
> _“They were faultless as a couple,” a source close to the Pendragons says. “They loved each other very much… I don’t think anyone ever considered them separating; it just didn’t seem conceivable.”_
> 
> _This announcement may bring credibility to rumours with regard to Pendragon having an affair with Catrina Tregor, his PA, although at the time the MP strongly denied such allegations, saying he was “extremely appalled” at what he felt was “a severe misjudgement” of his character. Miss de Bois also denied these rumours._
> 
> _To date, Miss de Bois is still hospitalised after the car crash on Tintagel St. last month. Miss de Bois was struck when a drunk driver drove through a red light and consequently collided with the right side of her vehicle. The driver died from spinal injuries whilst Miss de Bois had to be cut from the wreckage._
> 
> _Staff at St. Julian’s Private Hospital will not disclose any information with regard to her health as hospital policy dictates. It is widely assumed, however, that Miss de Bois is comatose, given the severity of the crash._
> 
> _Uther Pendragon is unavailable for comment, as are his children, Arthur and Morgana._
> 
> _(Full feature on page 3)  
>   
> _
> 
> * * *
> 
>  

 

“Bloody hell,” Merlin breathes. He thinks of the cold man with the slate eyes, the thunder that rolled across his face when Merlin called Yvette his wife, his son – Arthur? – pinned in place by his cruel hands.

“What’s up?” Gwen is to his left, watching the coffee machine like a hawk: primed and ready to yank their drinks to safety before milk is pissed in. Her face softens when she risks a quick peek at the paper in Merlin's hands; spots the publicity shot of Uther, blown up to swamp half the page. It brings out the steel in his brow and the cracks in his skin.

“Oh, that.” Her voice is gentle and sad. “It’s just awful. And some of the rumours, I mean – God knows how they come up with half—”

The coffee machine emits a loud _thunk_ , then gurgles. With superhuman speed, Gwen whips the Styrofoam cups to freedom - just as two jets of milk spurt from the nozzles.

Merlin puts the paper down. "Close call, Miss Smith."

“Isn’t it always?” Gwen rolls her eyes and hands him his drink. They sip in silence for a while, slouched against the counter in the staff kitchen whilst the clock above the sink counts the minutes until their break ends.

“You know who I feel most sorry for?” Gwen says suddenly, tossing her empty cup into the bin with a casual ease Merlin can only dream of. “His kids. Their mum’s comatose, might never wake up, and now this. I mean, on top of it all.”

Merlin hums in agreement. In mind’s eye he sees the blonde boy again, Yvette’s hand wrapped in his, telling her about his day as he traces whorling patterns on her knuckles with a thumb.

He hasn’t visited since the day Merlin left the Tangfastics at the door.

 

• • • • • •

 

Arthur spends Christmas Eve writing bad poetry on napkins he nicked from the Cornish Pasty Co. He’d surrendered to the aching in his gut and bought himself a medium traditional as a Christmas treat – something small and cheap to lift his spirits. At least that's what he told himself when he entered the shop.

It had been a mistake. Just standing there in the humid air drove him to the edge of delirium, sent his thoughts whizzing on a demonic carousel. With greedy eyes he devoured the labels pinned next to stacks and stacks of hot, steaming pasties: lamb and mint, the Chicken Greek, peppered steak, the porky (pork, potatoes, onion and rutabaga), and there had been sausage rolls too, fat and golden and crisp. Only an inward mantra of  _shitty wages shitty wages shitty wages_ stopped Arthur blowing all his earnings, earnings he'd fumbled through with trembling hands as the cashier wrapped his pasty in a paper bag.

He writes it on the napkin now – _shitty wages_. Then again, in capitals. Italics. Underlined. Big, small, slanted, sideways until the words burn themselves into the backs of his eyes:

_Shitty wages._

Shitty wages because he got the cast-offs, the desperate, the drugged-up, those who didn’t give a damn about his inelegance and clumsy hands. A couple of handjobs with Kay in the boy’s changing rooms didn’t prepare anyone for a brothel, and those had been down to curiosity on Arthur’s part.

Luckily, the barman of _The Rising Sun_ didn’t seem too concerned. Kilgharrah had summoned Arthur to the bar with a spindly claw once his second shift was over. For a moment he gazed at Arthur with shining eyes, elbows propped on the bar, cigarette held fast between thin lips until he took it out with a deft flick of his wrist.

“Listen up, kid," he said, then paused to take a drag. “Let yer old man K give yer some advice. If yer fuck well, yer get fucked more. More fucking an’ yer get more money. Simple maths, righ’?”

Arthur nodded, unable to look the barman in the face. Kilgharrah chewed thoughtfully on the end of his fag, and added (not unkindly): “Give it a week and you’ll piss on yer pride an’ get down t’ real business, gain some street-cred when you’re at it. An’ believe yer me when I says that’ll get yer places.” His eyes ran up and down Arthur’s thinning frame. “Migh’ even catch Aredian’s eye, pretty boy like you.”

The nib of the biro tears into the napkin at the memory. Shame resurfaces, sharp and biting like acid. Piss on his pride? What fucking pride did he have left? The words on the napkin blur. Arthur takes a deep, deep breath to steady himself, tilting his head back. If Kay was here, he thinks, as he stares into the pitch-black sky...  _Arth, what the hell are you? A bleedin' pussy?_ , that's what he'd say, even if there were worry-lines carved into his face.

“No,” Arthur tells the stars. “No way am I a bleedin’ pussy,” he clarifies – but he is sniffing a little, and the words wobble up and down like the hand of an untrained gunman. In the distance now he hears carol singers (one of them warbling in a falsetto), belting out _O Little Town of Bethlehem_. His mum’s favourite.

Arthur rests a palm on the damp canvas of his duffle bag. There’s a copy of _The Guardian_ inside from the 16th – buried under some grotty socks and underwear no doubt, but wrapped up in his only other jumper to protect it. In it, on page three, there are photos of Yvette: head intact, skin unmarred, bones unbroken…

…eyes open, not closed and bruised like they were when he saw her last, motionless in a room on Albion St., tens of miles away.

Arthur pulls his parka tighter around his shaking body, swallows thickly, opens his mouth, shuts it, again and again until he chokes out “Merry Christmas, mum”, knowing all too well it will forever be unheard.

 

• • • • • • 

 

_( “Merlin. You sound like James Blunt.”_

_“Musical god, that guy.”_

_“Billie Joe Armstrong is a musical god, Merls. James Blunt a musical travesty.”_

_“What, as shitty as the Defence Against the Dark Ar—?”_

_“Oh, for the love of… to answer your unspoken question – yeah. He is. Look, we’re doing ‘The Twelve Days of Christmas’ next – it’s on the other page – that’s it. Now sing properly, or I_ will _shout your dirtiest secret to this whole bloody street.”)_

 

• • • • • •

 

**_January 1 st, 2003  
_ **

This is the day the pieces fall into place.

This is the day he Gets It, Gets It so fucking well Kilgharrah’s eyes are bright with glee when he shouts across the room, “that’s it, kid! Didn’t I tell yer?”

This is the day he whores himself out so much he forgets his own name. All he remembers the morning after is adrenaline, waves of it. Sweat swathing his body. His heart pounding in his mouth. Skin. Kneeling. Hands. Tongues. Words...

This is the day he finds a packet of Tangfastics shoved in the bottom of his bag, misshapen, lumpy. By then he’d smoked a celebratory joint a lad called Elliot had given him, and he can’t do much more than stare blankly down at it.

This is the day Arthur pisses on his pride.

And on this day, at 10:21pm precisely, a hand shifts in a darkened hospital room… shifts, ever so slightly, on the covers.

Then it reaches, fingers splayed, towards the empty visitor chairs. For three heartbeats ( _buh-bleep, buh-bleep, buh-bleep_ , counts the heart monitor) it reaches…

…only to crumple back onto the bed linen, lifeless.

 

 

 

* * *

 

   **ೋ**

 


	3. Chapter 3

  **ೋ**

╔════════════════════╗

  
 **FALLING**  
  
  
╚════════════════════╝

 

 

 

**_January 3 rd, 2003_ **

He names himself Arthur King in a flash of self-loathing (because what could be more ironic than that?) and celebrates his seventeenth birthday alone in his flat playing Tetris on his Nokia  - Old Man K gave it to him for "business" - and smoking weed he got off Elliot.

Later he goes out to ASDA and gets a chocolate caterpillar cake, a pack of birthday candles, a large pepperoni pizza and a tub of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream. Arthur carries the bundle to the till, overflowing with recklessness, giddy at the sheer ridiculousness of it all. Pizza for his birthday meal? Ice cream and cake for pudding? Like he was fucking five years old again, five years old and punching Morgana because she blew out the candles for him when it was _his birthday_ like an evil little harpy or somethi—

“That’s ten ninety eight all together,” says the cashier, eyeing him warily. Arthur blinks, a little thrown, but forces himself to smile. He pays (focusing hard on his hands, making sure they’re steady), and leaves with only the slightest lurch. In the car park he waves at the first person he sees, a woman with mousy wisps of hair framing her face and a khaki headscarf. She shrinks back in alarm, hand flying to her chest.

“I’ve got work tonight!” Arthur calls, and then he pouts. “ _And_ it’s my birthday,” he says, shaking the bag. “My birthday! Look! My birthday!”

The woman skirts around him, keeping at least ten metres between them, and scurries into the supermarket. Arthur stares at her receding back. Bloody cheek. Aren’t you supposed to be nice to people on their birthday? He ransacks the farther reaches of his brain, unearths forgotten snapshots of his dad pushing a present across the breakfast table without looking up from the paper, Morgana yelling at him to stop faffing around with the Sellotape and rip the wrapping paper off…

Arthur frowns. That can’t be right, a small voice mumbles in the back of his head. He delves deeper, sifts through more images: Liza, the housekeeper, half-listening to his explanation of how his new remote control car worked; Sophia slagging him off on his sixteenth in front of the lads and laughing with them all (even though he wasn’t pissed enough not to feel needles of humiliation spear his heart); Morgana pouncing upon him, hugging him so hard he couldn’t breathe… his mum, too, fair-haired and bright-eyed and awake and alive and he was in her arms, warm and safe and lo—

The angry blare of a car horn slashes through the memory. Arthur jolts in surprise, Yvette’s touch and Persil-scented blouse torn from his grasp. To his right there’s a Ford Siesta, the driver winding down the window to give Arthur a bollocking when all he was doing was thinking, bloody hell. _And_ it’s his birthday. Why is no one being nice to him when it’s his birthday?

“Jesus bloody Christ, how ‘bout you look where the fuck you’re going?” The driver is red-faced, his voice a roar. Uther’s face flickers across Arthur’s vision. “Nearly bloody ran you over. Nearly crashed my bloody car ‘cause _some_ dumbass twat walked straight into the road—”

And out of Arthur’s mouth comes something along the lines of “Jesus bloody Christ, dumbass, it’s my birthday. I’m a big boy now. Give me a break, yeah?”, though he can’t recall exactly what he said. It’s hazy, the snapshots sputtering in and out of his mind with the streets and the people and roads… hazy until he’s nearly home, moving on heavy legs. He takes the stairs because the lift’s bust again. He unlocks his flat (after missing the keyhole four times); spreads his arms wide, wobbles; and then—

“It’s my birthday,” he says, imperious, like a king addressing his court. Arthur holds up the bag. “See? And I’m going to have a great fucking time, a fucking great time, a time fucking great time ‘cause I’m a big boy now and I’m going to have a great time fucking when I go t’ work tonight. A great fucking time _fucking_ ,” and he kicks the door shut behind him. Arthur throws the keys at the side table and misses.

He staggers into the kitchen. “I even bought ice-cream. And candles,” he tells the table, voice solemn but breathy after his outburst. He tips the bag upside-down with numb hands. The cake bounces once, twice, three times across the table. The candles skitter after it. The pizza flops onto the tabletop. The Ben & Jerry’s rolls onto the floor with a _thunk_.

“And I got beer,” Arthur adds, nodding at the tiny mini fridge in the corner. “I like beer. D’you like beer?”

The table doesn’t reply.

“Oh well.” Arthur shrugs off his parka. “More for the birthday boy, hey?”

 

• • • • • •

 

_(“Christ, mum – are you alright? You look bloody terrible—”_

_“Merlin Emrys, how many times have I tol—?”_

_“God’s sake! I know swearing’s a bad habit. Just tell me you’re okay. ‘Cause you look really pale. Like death.”_

_“What a flattering comparison, Merlin.”_

_“I’m serious!”_

_“I gathered. Stop fretting, sweetheart – I’m fine. There was a boy completely off his head at the supermarket and… well, he threw me a bit, that’s all.”_

_“…You sure that you’re okay, though?”_

_“Oh, stop fussing over me like a mother hen and put the kettle on. A cup of Earl Grey would be lovely. And the rest of the shopping is in the car.”)_

• • • • • •

 

**_January 5 th, 2003_ **

“Alrigh’, kid?” Kilgharrah is cleaning pint glasses at the bar when Arthur walks in. “How’s yer new place?”

Arthur thinks of the bedroom at his dad’s: forty foot long and wide, wallpapered, with a double bed and carpet his feet sank into and an ensuite bathroom; but says “it’s great, thanks”, with as much enthusiasm as he can muster. So his new place is a rathole, tiny and cramped and smelling constantly of piss – but it was Home. Somewhere to rest his head every night. Somewhere with a pillow and a duvet, even if there’s no central heating and the duvet is wafer-thin (the walls are even thinner), and the bed is just wide enough to hold him and his new bathroom is a communal shower down the corridor.

Kilgharrah smiled, the crags in his skin deepening. “Ah, I know it ain’t much, but better than nothin’, righ’? Keeps the rain out, anyways. Better ‘n’ livin’ in the gutter.”

Arthur hangs his parka up behind the bar. “Thanks,” he says, the word unfamiliar and oddly shaped in his mouth. Never mind. He’ll get used to it, scrounging around at the bottom of the social ladder, relying too much on other people. “Thanks for getting it for me.”

“S’alrigh’. I mean, you’re payin’ some o’ the rent, righ’?” Kilgharrah shrugs; sets a clean glass aside, picks up another. “‘Sides… customers are less likely to fuck yer if yer stuck on the street. Jus’ givin’ yer a helpin’ hand, tha’s yer old man K for yer, eh?”

“Um. Yeah.” Arthur loops the strap of his duffel bag over a hook next to his parka. Now the silence is beginning to stretch, and Arthur is wondering if he should risk another thank you when Kilgharrah waggles an elbow at a bulging black bin bag, tied at the top and leaning against a three-legged chair, and says:

“Couldn’t take tha’ out the back, could yer? My back jus’ ain’t the same anymore, if’n yer get what I mean.”

So Arthur goes out the back, into a film-esque back alley: lit by a streetlight at one end and moonlight at the other. Stumbling slightly, he swings the bag onto a pyramid of others with a grunt – he’s lost a lot of weight in just over a month and it shows in more than his hipbones and appearing ribs.

_Thud._

Arthur’s head whips to the left. He steps back on instinct; strains his ears. Was that a muffled ‘fuck’? Maybe it was the click of a gun’s saf—

God, was he that paranoid? No. No, no, no. Absolutely not. Just… cautious. Arthur stares at the pool of black in front of him now the moon has gone behind a cloud, stares at the slimy walls and the faint halo of streetlight at the end of the alley. Cautious. Definitely not paranoid. Definitely not par—

Did something move?

Shit.

Arthur risks a glance over his shoulder. The back entrance to _The Rising Sun_ is only a few feet away. And he's a good runner. He’d won cross country and athletic track awards his whole life, anyway. Except back then he’d only raced against his schoolmates and not some psycho with a knife. Or a gun. Or whatever they might have. Hasn’t there a rise in knife crime recently?

So they’ll have a knife. They’re going to have a fucking knife and he’s going to be stabbed. Probably to death.

 _Not paranoid just cautious not paranoid definitely not paranoid def_ —

A flicker of movement. Arthur presses his lips together, bites back a whimper. Where the hell are his fight or flight instincts (or whatever they are) and, oh Christ, why is he remembering a bloody biology lesson right _now_ when someone’s getting closer and he’s frozen on the spot with only a shirt covering his chest and _there’s_ _been a rise in knife cri_ —

A flash of gold.

Out of Arthur’s mouth spills a surprisingly steady “El?”, but there is no reply.

“El, you dick.” Arthur swallows. His mouth is dry, his voice too loud. “I know it’s you.”

Silence.

…And then Elliot melts out of the shadows, an impish grin on his face. The gold stud in his nose glints in the waxing moonlight, reappearing as the cloud shifts, and there are patches of dirt on the knees of his chinos from where he fell over just thirty seconds earlier.

“Gotcha!” He says, and smirks. “I had you there. You were gonna shit your pretty boy pants—”

“It could’ve been anyone.” Arthur bites out, irritable now his nerves are frayed. He wipes his hands on his jeans to get rid of their clammy film, and says with a glare that would make Uther proud, “ _Anyone_ , since London has a population of, I don’t know – _seven million_.”

Elliot has the decency to look ashamed. “Sure. I guess it wasn’t that funny,” he mumbles, shoving his hands into the front pocket of his hoodie. They walk towards the back door. “So… weekend alright, mate? Flat good?”

“Yeah,” Arthur tugs the door open and they step into the warmth. “Went to the supermarket Saturday, got some stuff. Can’t get much yet though – need more cash.” He pauses; thinks of the remaining chocolate caterpillar cake still in the fridge. It will be his dinner later, when he’s weary and sore but has a fistful of twenties in the inside pocket of his parka for a night's work well done. “And the flat’s shitty, but I wasn’t gonna get my hopes up. Better than nothing, anyway.”

“Anything’s better than nothing.”

“How perceptive of you. You know, if you wanted you could stay over some time.”

“With my little gay friend?” Elliot quirks an eyebrow, tone fond. “Artie, mate, whatever you’re implying… it’s not like I don’t spend enough time fucking—”

“Who said I was implying anything, bellend?" Arthur scowls. "Look, I just mean - if you get sick of that children’s home or whatever of yours, you could come crash at—”

“Alright, alright.” Elliot’s hands are held up in defeat when they walk past the bar (Kilgharrah grunts at them in acknowledgement, still cleaning the pint glasses). “I get you. Guess it would be nice to get away from that witch Nimueh… bat-shit crazy, she is.”

Arthur stiffens a little at the word _witch_ , but Elliot doesn’t notice, adding thoughtfully: “Must be on dope or something.”

“Says the dick who sells weed.”

“Fuck off.”

• • • • • •

****

**_January 11 th, 2003_ **

He’s walking home after work when he passes _The Pheonix’s Eye_ , a pub he remembers because the door doesn’t have paint peeling off it, like the oxblood coat at the _Sun_ is.

There he spies a trio sat around a round table that is meant for at least eight: two guys and a girl. The girl is caramel-skinned, pretty and laughing a little too hard at something one of her friends has said – the tanned one on the right with one heck of a jawline and dark, tousled hair. He’s bloody gorgeous, the kind of guy Morgana would've fawned over in her shitty celebrity magazines and deemed utterly fuckable. No surprise, then, when Arthur sees the girl’s hand entwined with Mr Utterly Fuckable's on the tabletop.

The other guy is gangly and a lightweight, if his streams of giggles are anything to go by. Arthur smirks. Sure, he could teach this guy a few tricks; once upon a time he could drink his weight in beer and hold his own, easy. He is shaking his head and turning away when the gangly guy looks – looks straight at… him.

Straight at him, eyes very, very blue and very, very glazed and very, very… familiar.

Familiar. Where has he seen this guy before? All cheekbones (those  _cheekbones_ , Christ) and arms and legs and eyes and black hair—

—and suddenly Blue Eyes waves, sloppily, in his direction. The girl throws back her head and laughs even harder. Her boyfriend glances over his shoulder at Arthur; smiles distractedly, apology written all over his face, and nudges the girl gently in the side with his elbow.

And Blue Eyes is still waving.

Arthur hesitates, then unearths a hand from the pocket of his parka and waves back. God knows he feels like a twat as he does it, but the smile on Blue Eyes’ face is so wide it almost seems worth it… but then the girl says something, and her boyfriend swats her playfully, and Blue Eyes’ arm drops.

He looks away, and Arthur is forgotten.

• • • • • •

 

_(“I’m not joking! That’s what she said!”_

_“Lance, you bastard. Stop killing me! I can’t believe_ — _”_

_“It’s true, Gwen. Swear it. On your life.”_

_“What’s wrong with swearing on_ your _life, you di_ – _Merls, what are you doing?”_

_“…”_

_“Stop harassing strangers, you perv – oi! Lancelot du Lac, for your crimes against_ — _”_

 _“Crimes? Pft, that was a gesture of affection_ — _”_

_“No excuses, sweet. Get another round, else I won't be kissing your brains out. Not like Merls is in a fit state to complain, mm? _”_ )_

• • • • • •

 

**_February 20 th, 2003_ **

“Whose idea was this?” Arthur asks, looking down at Elliot, who is sprawled on the picnic blanket with his cap pulled down over his eyes and his arms folded back behind his head.

“Mine,” Elena says, and she frowns, looking around the park. It is empty aside from the four of them, the mound of cheap food they’d all chipped in for and a couple of paper McDonalds bags twirling down the path. “’Cause the weather was well nice earlier. Sunny and all.”

“It’s February,” Wayne grumbles in his Irish brogue. He has a whiskey bottle in his fist, like when he and Arthur first met down that stupid little back alley (and like he would when he drinks himself to death on Christmas Day, 2015, on the streets of Dublin). He takes a glug before he adds: “Nice idea all the same, Ellie m' beaut.”

“Yeah, but it’s freezing.” Arthur brings his knees closer to his chest and pulls his hood up over his ears. “I can’t feel my fucking face.”

“Jeez, go grow some balls of steel.” Elena shoots back, though her lips are turning blue at the edges and the wind is whipping her hair out of its ponytail. “By the way, guys – any of you know where Sefa’s got to? I ain’t seen her ‘round in forever.”

“I asked Old Man K yesterday,” Elliot replies. “Said she caught Aredian’s fancy. She’s working at his place now.”

Wayne chokes on his mouthful of whiskey and bolts into a sitting position. Arthur thumps him on the back – a little harder than he ought to, really, but the dick had nicked and then sold his Rolex.

“Jesus,” Wayne splutters. A shower of spittle and whiskey coats Elliot’s front (Elliot recoils as best he can, shrinking into his hoodie and the grass). “Lucky bitch.”

“I guess.” Elena has deflated like a balloon since Elliot broke the news and now stares down at her hands, eyes cloudy like the grey sky above – and just as bleak. But like all street kids do because they’ve got no other option, she drives her shoulders back, clears her throat and says: “Well. S’alright. We weren’t that close.”

They sit cocooned in silence for a while, shivering in the cold whilst Wayne takes swigs of his whiskey and Elliot glowers up at the sky with such intensity Arthur half expects it to crack in two. Elena watches the ducks paddling on the river as she winds a stray lock of hair around her finger, and she looks so…so _lost_ that anger rumbles through Arthur’s bones. He doesn’t know even half of Elena’s history, doesn’t know where she came from or her favourite colour or even her last name; but he knows what she deserves – and it isn’t this. She doesn’t deserve those words that cut like knives, whore and slut and prostitute and slag, not when her face is pretty and her heart is gold.

“Who is this Aredian guy, anyway?” Arthur hears himself say, far away in the real world. “’Cause from what I’ve heard, he sounds like a bigger prick than my dad.”

All three fling their gazes in his direction. For an instant Arthur is sure, so sure, they know the truth – that he is a Pendragon, not a King; that he’s had the farthest to fall out of all of them, right from the peak to the bottom of the Hell’s pit… except Elena just nods, and Wayne grunts his agreement, and Elliot says:

“Yeah, well. I guess he is.” He turns his eyes back to the sky. “He handpicks the best of ‘em, takes ‘em to his business, they fuck his clients…”

“The hours are bitches.” Elena reaches out for a handful of crisps, shoves them in her mouth, talks around them whilst she chews. “But you get triple what you get at the _Sun_ , and tips on top of that. And he looks after his guys pretty well, too. Lets ‘em run extra errands if they want even more dosh, pays part their rent… must be up to their eyeballs in cash, them fuckers.”

“Complimentary Christmas and birthday gifts,” Wayne chips in. Arthur’s eyebrows rocket upward. He waits for a sly wink or a _gotcha!_ grin, something to tell him it’s all one big joke, but Wayne’s face is impassive, his eyes bitter.

“Are you fucking kidding?”

“Well, I dunno, princess.” Wayne shrugs; stretches his arms over his head and yawns. “That’s jus’ what I heard. Used to know this guy called Perce and he got, like, a jacket from Superdry one year, or summat—”

—and an image of Kay in a black windcheater with SUPERDRY JPN. on the back slams into Arthur’s mind. He stares at the orange font; at the familiar silhouette of his best friend (can he even call him that anymore?) and stronger than the anger he’d felt for Elena, stronger than the shame that weighs him down day after day after fucking day, comes longing.

Kay is turning now, turning to look straight at him like Blue Eyes did outside that pub. His lips are parting. Words slither off his tongue: “Only seventy quid, Arth. That’s not even a bloody dent in your dad’s savings—”

Arthur stabs the pause button in his head. Kay freezes, face and mouth and words jerking to a halt. Their gazes are locked. Snagged against each other as Arthur folds Kay up and shoves him away; through a million other mindless thoughts in his head—

“Jeez, Arth – you okay?”

The world tumbles back into place, thrust from behind by Elena’s voice. She’s watching him, concern drawn all over her features and mirrored on Elliot’s. Wayne looks half-sympathetic, half-pitying; but in a true act of love and understanding, he passes across the near empty whiskey bottle. Arthur tilts his head back and pours the last dregs into his mouth.

Then he wipes the back of his hand across his lips, sucks in a great gulp of air… remembers Ellie moments before, doing what all street kids did because they had no other option.

He drives his shoulders back.

Clears his throat…

…and tosses the empty bottle back at Wayne. From his throat crawls a husky “thanks, mate”, and then there is silence. Elena and Elliot still have their eyes on him – Arthur can feel them in the hollows of his cheeks – but he knows, somehow, that they will not speak. Arthur keeps looking at Wayne, with his scraggly hair and battered bomber jacket and uneven stubble because he still hasn’t got the hang of shaving yet, not without someone to guide him through it.

“You were thinking ‘bout the past, right?” Wayne’s tone is gentle, almost kind. Arthur says nothing, because they know there is nothing to say. A small smile flits across Wayne’s face. It’s raw, weirdly soft and tender, like his salute to Arthur with a new bottle of whiskey.

“Also a bitch,” Wayne says. “And one best forgetting about.”

 

• • • • • •

 

**_March 7 th, 2003_ **

The room is draped in reverent silence when he enters – a tall man with greying hair, skin as weathered as Kilgharrah’s, and a black woollen trench coat belted around his waist. Silver eyes sweep across the scene; turn fearful gazes away and galvanise everyone into action all at once.

The man settles himself at the bar, exchanges a few words with Kilgharrah (who has pulled a blood-red cocktail out of nowhere, even with a bust back and eighty odd years under his belt), turns his eyes back towards the innards of the brothel, tapping his cane against the leg of the barstool…

…and begins to hunt.

 

 

 

* * *

  **ೋ**

 


	4. Chapter 4

  **ೋ**

╔════════════════════╗

  
 **SHIVER**  
  
  
╚════════════════════╝ 

 

 

 

 

 • • • • • •

**3 YEARS LATER**

 

 

 

**_April 27 th, 2006_ **

“God knows how you’re still going,” Merlin says to Yvette. He is moving her gently from side-to-side for the third time today, as Gaius’s detailed physical therapy plan entails. “Guess you have your ex-husband to thank. Bloody bastard is still paying for all this stuff, and flat out refused to have you taken off life support way back in the beginning. Weird. D’you think he still loves you? Or is it, like, out of guilt?”

Yvette is shaking her head with the movement of her body; Merlin places a hand on her cheek, his touch feather-light, to still her silent protest.

“I think you’re gonna wake up soon,” he tells her. “I get these feelings sometimes and… and…well. I just think you will.” The hand traces the surgery scars on one side of Yvette’s face, faint and pale and ancient to him. They are almost invisible against her skin, partly hidden by ribbons of blonde hair.

Merlin looks down at her, thoughtful and frowning, only to shake his head.

“Lance thinks I’m mad,” he goes on. “Gwen will think so too, ‘cause couples are crazy like that. But I’m not mad. Just right. I bet I’m right. Uther whatshisface wasn’t wrong when he said you’d come back, if you ask me.” He pauses, then scrabbles to explain himself: “Not that I agree with anything else he says. You know” — Merlin looks over his shoulder; leans forward like little girls do before they share their secrets — “he thinks people like me should be _arrested_. Arrested, Christ on a bike!”

Tugging on his green scrubs, Merlin straightens himself. With practiced ease he draws the biro from his pocket, licks his lips, reaches for the clipboard and flicks through its wad of paper until the sheet headed _Physical Therapy_ appears.

“Huh, like I’ve done anything wrong,” Merlin mutters as he ticks the third box in the row _27.04.06_. “I mean, I shoplifted a newsagent once. But” — he swipes the biro through the air; holds it like he’s an indignant uni lecturer — “I was six! And I wanted a Snickers and my mum wouldn’t get one…”

Yvette remains silent and sleeping, and Merlin trails off, hopeless and lonely and suffocated in misery. He hates April – all grey skies and rain and more rain, and it’s the month Kurt Cobain died, which (whatever his mum says) he will never truly get over; because _Nevermind_ was and is and will be musical gold forevermore. Merlin looks at Yvette’s face now: at the tiny rosy streaks on her cheeks, the tendrils of scarring draped on the skin, and his mind drifts back to her son in his grey t-shirt. In mind’s eye the boy’s features are fuzzy, unformed, erased by time and forgetfulness on Merlin’s part; but Merlin still thinks of him as Someone. Someone… Someone _human_ , with a heart and too many feelings and a tongue clumsy with youth, as Someone who needs their mother and the knowledge and comfort they carry, else they will be lost.

He wonders how lost this Someone is without her.

 

• • • • • •

 

**_July 8 th, 2006_ **

The _Sun_ is dim and quiet now London wallows in the small hours. Ghost-voices curl into Arthur’s ears from the cloakroom – Elena’s and another girl’s, soft and sober, too far away to hear properly. He is wiping beer, cider, cheap wine, blood from a grazed elbow off the bar with a rag and spritzes of Dettol.

He eyes the bar top. Still a little grubby. Arthur tosses the old rag into the bin, eases a new one out his back pocket. He is coating the bar with more Dettol when Elena and her friend appear.

“See you later, yeah?” Arthur says without looking up. He knows Elena’s face will be morphing into an expression she has invented just for him; one that reads all too clearly  _why are you doing this to yourself?,_  one that he hates with every fucking fibre of his being because he doesn't – doesn't need anyone’s damn _pity_.

“Yeah,” the other girl says, zipping up a duffel coat that was blue once but has faded into grey. And then she smiles, and her eyes light up, and she intones in a deep voice: “When shall we three meet again?”

Elena rolls her eyes and Arthur replies, “in thunder, lightning or in rain?”, the words automatic, his voice dull. Hurt fleets over the girl’s features. Arthur can’t bring himself to care. He throws the rag in the bin, disgusted; reaches for the Dettol, slopes around to the front of the bar and as he sits cross-legged in front of it, jostling barstools out the way, the girls start a hushed conversation. Out of the corner of his eye he sees Elena’s earnest expression, feels her friend hurl a glance at him with doleful eyes.

“I’ll wait outside,” the girl says. Then she leaves, and Arthur and Elena are alone.

He ignores her. On the bar front there’s dried cum, evidence of an adventurous client indeed, and Arthur just stares at the suds of Dettol while they mosey towards the ground, paths erratic and mesmerising – as if they are raindrops on a window pane. In the back of his head he remembers his dad’s BMW and sprawling on the leather seats on the way back from the airport, ten years old and watching the English rain for hours; because his father didn’t do idle chatter and Morgana was asleep on the other side of the car, jaw slack, breathing deep…

Elena sighs. The memory eludes Arthur now, wriggles free of his hands, and he can hear Elena’s footsteps on the ratty beer-stained carpet. _Thud, thud, thud_.

He ignores her.

He starts to clean. The motions are familiar, comforting, mindless – back and forth and back and forth and back and forth. Easy and painless and unlike all the other shit he’s got through to get here, sat on the floor of a bloody brothel.

Arthur wants to laugh, but he bites it back.

Elena settles herself next to him; brings her knees up to her chest.

“It wasn’t your fault, you know,” she says. Arthur grunts, disbelieving, hating her expectant eyes and gentle words. He keeps his gaze on the bar front, free of half the cum and with more Dettol dripping down over the remains. His hand slips into his back pocket; finds another rag, this one red with yellow stripes.

“It’s… well, it’s just one of them things,” Elena goes on. She ducks her head, fingers toying with the grotty laces of her Primark sneakers. “’S just one of them things. My Ma used to say that all the time.”

The bar front is clean now, and in the dark glass sheet (Kilgharrah installed it for cheap in 2004 to hide the wood rotting behind it, just a month before a stroke struck him down) Arthur sees the pair of them, a little too thin with worn-in clothes and tired eyes. He looks at himself, nineteen-going-on-twenty, and suddenly understands what authors really mean when they tell their readers that their character’s eyes are too old and have seen too much. His hands curl into fists. The rag suffocates, lost in the fingers of his right hand while that same hand skates down the bar front; thumps onto the floor.

“What was she like?” Arthur asks hoarsely.

“Hm?”

“Your mum. Ma. Whatever.”

“Well,” Elena shrugs, trying to feign indifference even though her words are stilted. “She was like any Ma, in the beginning. Nice. Knew lots of stuff. Always gave me hugs and kisses.” She looks down again, this time at her knees. They are littered with old scars. “Cleaned me up when I was hurt,” Elena adds, and then she stops and swallows and starts to fiddle with her shoelaces once more.

“But she was a schizo.” The words are so quiet Arthur can barely catch them. “Later on, I mean. One day she was alright, next she was in bed crying about some guy who was ‘parrently going to kill her, an’ the next she’d see all this horrible stuff… just out the blue, yeah?” Elena looks at him, wary; needing him to understand.

Arthur nods to show he does, and she turns back to her knees.

“Then one day she… she got sick of it all. Killed herself. Overdose of Zyprexa.” Elena laughs, but is hollow. Humourless. “An’ I never even thought she took her meds. Shaun… my brother found her in the bathroom and she was just… gone.”

The words are hard to force past the lump in his throat – “I’m sorry” – and they do nothing, even when in the air, just hang like broken dreamcatchers. But Elena leans back against the leg of a barstool and mumbles, “Nah, s'alright. Was ages ago, anyways." She closes her eyes. "So... I left, 'cause my dad hit the drink an' - and I said to myself I wasn't going to stick around just to see him die too. Ma's probably rolling in her grave, but..."

“You do what you gotta do,” Arthur fills in for her. It's the golden rule of all the fuck ups and dossers just like Matthew 7:12 is the golden rule for all Christians.

“Yeah,” she says, opening her eyes. “You sure do. Which is why you took up Aredian’s offer.”

“Ellie—”

“Yeah, yeah. You don’t want to talk about it.” Elena waves a hand, disinterested. “So don’t. Just listen, Arth, ‘cause Mithian will be getting well pissy waiting for me outside. Alright?”

Arthur opens his mouth but Elena ploughs onward. “Look. What happened to Elliot… you couldn’t’ve done anything ‘bout it, if you’d been there, except get yourself stabbed in the fucking chest too—”

“I sh—”

“Oh for fuck’s sake – _no_. What would you have done? Knocked them for fucking six? No, Arth. You would be just as dead as El. So piss on all your heroic fantasies. El’s luck was ballsy, shitty, absolute bollocks, yeah. But it wasn’t your fault.” Elena rests a hand on Arthur’s arm and hurries on, voice softening when his face darkens and he bridles at her touch. “I don’t even get how you can blame yourself. You’d lost tou—”

“Because I should’ve been there!” Arthur tears his arm out of her warm grip. Anger he'd locked away exploded in his chest, tightening it even as they wet his eyes with saline. “I should’ve – should’ve—”

“Should’ve what?” Elena asks, words incredulous and so jarring Arthur can’t help but think of Morgana and her tongue, a tongue that could cut even Uther’s arguments into ribbons. He gives up, sags forwards until his forehead rests on the bar front. “I don’t know,” he whispers, broken. His breath condenses on the tinted glass. “Just… something. We were mates.”

“No," Elena’s voice is soft again. “No, you weren't. Not after Aredian picked you up, 'cause he pushed you away. El was jealous, and you felt bad because you care too much about other people. You tried to keep him close. He didn’t like feeling like a charity case, or whatever—”

—and the anger is back, a growing tornado in his head, a fire in his blood. Red starts to cloud his vision. What the fuck does she know? Sprouting goddamn shit about him like she bloody _knows_ him when she'd been as bad as the others, just as distant over the past years, just as bloody cold until this moment when she acted on pity and pity alone—

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Elena snorts. _Snorts,_ like he’s a fucking joke _._ “Yeah,” she’s saying as the red thickens, deepens, and his blood burns and the tornado picks up speed, “and I’m fucking Beyoncé. You know exactly what I’m talking 'bout. And all this fucking moping on your part is because you feel guilty for going to Aredian’s, guilty for leaving El behind when it's not y—”

“Get out.”

“Sorry?”

Arthur is on his feet now, on his feet and not sure how he got there but past fucking caring. “I said” — he glares down at her — “ _get out_.”

He spins on his heel, paces for all of five seconds. Then he prowls behind the bar. The tornado is tearing his head apart, ripping reason into shreds, battering his defences until Arthur's control shudders, splinters, snaps, and he is roaring at the fridge stuffed with soft drinks:

“You don’t know shit about me! You don’t – don’t know a fucking _thing_ , so don’t - don't you _dare_ \- shit!"

He throws a punch, all reason gone. His fist crunches into the plastered wall, next to the chalkboard with _1 pint for £2.95, 3 for £5_ on it in Old Man K’s writing. Pain shivers up his arm. Arthur soaks himself in it, in all its bitterness and sharpness and familiarity even now he is here, even now he is this – this _manwhore_ going nowhere when he should be at uni, should be having the time of his life, should have a mum to call and a dad to rely on and Morgana and Kay and his _mum_ , fuck, why can’t he have his _mum_?

“Arth—”

But the laugh he bit back earlier blossoms now, blooms as something dark and dry and he shakes his head and grins and wipes his hand on his blue button-down so it is speckled with blood. Elena’s face is drawn, her eyes wide and terrified. She steps back, stumbles on a barstool, rights herself.

Arthur leans across the bar, both hands curling around its edge. “You don’t know _shit_ ,” he bellows, millions of miles away, lost in the middle of the tornado, surrounded by the blood pounding in his ears and the sweetest pain he can remember, pain that makes him feel _alive._  "You think you're so fucking smart, so fucking  _smart_ even though you wouldn't be caught dead within a bloody mile of me when Aredian came and picked me up—"

Elena turns and sprints towards the door.

“Oh, yeah. That’s it, Ellie! Run along. Get the fuck out!” A blind hand lashes out, grabs a pint glass, lobs it at the floor. It shatters into thousands of tiny bloodied diamond pieces. “And just remember, I could have you fucking fired, sweet. Fucking _fired_!”

The door to the _Sun_ slams shut.

Aside from Arthur’s wheezing breaths and the ticking clock on the wall, the hour hand inching closer to two am, it is silent.

Arthur loosens his hands and turns away from the bar, leaving smears of blood on its surface. And as he turns, his Converse slip on what bloodied diamond pieces don’t sink into their soles. He pitches forwards; flings an arm in front of his face with seconds to spare.

With an agonised hiss, Arthur crumples onto the glass. Blood dribbles down his face, fresh from his bust knuckles; dribbles into his eye and to the corner of his mouth where he licks it away. It reminds him of long-gone rugby matches with Kay and the lads, of running full-pelt across the churned up grass and the cold mud that coated his legs and kit and of Kay's hyena-esque laugh when one of Camelot's team scored a try. Arthur whimpers at the memory; squeezes his eyes shut. Desperate to escape, he curls into a foetal position and ignores the pain that comes in pinpricks, needles, waves.

Carefully, he cradles his throbbing hand in the other, and holds it to his chest.

“Oh God.” His voice is wavering, unsteady. “I dunno what to do,” he tells the floor and the glass and the blood. His thoughts have jammed to a halt, lost in the haze of pain that encircles his head like a halo. “’N’ I’m so tired. It’s hard, all this…”

Arthur trails off; tries to fight off big, fat tears that are waiting on his lower lashlines. The clock keeps on ticking, ticking past half one to twenty-to, quarter-to, ten-to…

“Mum,” he chokes out. “Where... where’d you…?” He shifts on the floor and the glass, twisting his head, trying to find her with unfocused eyes. “Mm… jus'... I jus' need you. S'all so fucking bad...”

 

• • • • • •

 

**_November 15 th, 2006_ **

He drifts, one earphone nestled in his ear; drifts to Win Butler crooning the lyrics of _Une Année Sans Lumière_. His iPod (ancient now, a white iPod classic, second generation, filled with music naïve old-rich-kid-Arthur liked) is tucked in the inner pocket of his parka, safe from prying eyes and hands, and the cord of the earphones snakes under his hoodie until the earbuds resurface at his throat.

Cold wind ruffles his hair and plays with the smoke twisting from the end of his cigarette, brushing it against his face. It is cloying, bittersweet; scrapes at his throat, makes his closed eyelids twitch. A habit, smoking… a habit his parents would frown upon, and jointly for a change.

The words _reasons behind the divorce are still unclear_ float across the backs of his eyes, and Arthur grimaces, marring his face at the thought of the newspaper article, still in his possession, still in his duffel bag. Three years later and that line of type still rings true; no member of the general public has a clue why his mum and dad split, though God knows plenty have guessed.

Arthur takes another drag. Well, his dad wouldn’t want his dirty little secret to trash his political career – and even Morgana, who is living fucking proof of it, isn’t cold-hearted enough to ruin everything Uther lives for. From what Arthur picked up when reading the articles following the announcement (he had to start going to different newsagents each time after one of the shopkeepers decided he kept cropping up to eye his daughter, a blonde bimbo with too much cleavage on show – ironic, given Arthur was not a ladies man), Morgana doesn’t keep in touch with Uther anymore.

_…une année sans lumière_   
_je monte un cheval_   
_qui porte des oeilleres…_

Arthur hums, softly, to the music… and drifts a little further. The back of his head is drawing closer, somewhere dark and warm where he can sit for a while with a distant hand holding his fag between his middle and index fingers and a distant mouth puffing trails of smoke into the air.

_…la nuit, mes yeux t’eclairent_   
_ne dis pas à ton père_   
_qu’il porte des oeilleres…_

It’s the kind of place where his thoughts shudder and fall to pieces, then whorl around his brain half-formed, half-alive, until words and images and voices and faces play out before him like dreams. Elusive. Forgettable.

The song changes.

 _Bit like me, I ‘spose_ , he thinks, dreamy, as the first chords to _Raindrops_ by Armor For Sleep tumble into his brain.

He remembers his old phone, the one he sold to that rabbit-eyed girl outside the _Sun_. A week before he did it he deleted all their numbers – Morgana’s, Kay’s, even his mum’s until every new text reading _jfc Arth where r u?_ and _CALL ME AS SOON AS YOU GET THIS_ were crowned with _Unknown Number_. Still, Morgana’s blunt follow-up of _PICK UP YOUR FUCKING PHONE_ was all too identifiable, even with a confession of care (at least 500 words long) tacked onto the end; something so uncharacteristic for her it felt like the world was on the brink of self-destructing.

Arthur hadn’t been able to read it all. The first hundred words had struck him deep, shards like _love_ and _baby brother_ and _worried about you_ and _I_ _need you, you fucking prick_ punching into his heart like a stapler would to paper. Worse was not knowing if they were true, not knowing if his dad was right. Because she can’t have known by then – can’t have known where he was and why he was there…

_…you appear like raindrops_   
_and leave like you sink through_   
_the streets that you fall on,_   
_the cars that slip on you…_

It’s too late, anyway. He forgot her digits long ago, forgot the number of her flat in Cambridge (it was either 28, 29, or 30), and even though there would be, at most, only two instances in which he would utterly humiliate himself before he found her - that is, if she hadn’t moved on…

What if his dad was right?

Besides, he’s a big boy now. He got himself out the gutter, quite fucking literally; found a steady job and worked his way up. The dumb sixteen-year-old whore who gave a punk guy a blowjob for twenty quid is now a barman of the _Sun_ since Kilgharrah died. In his place, Arthur works Monday to Thursday, 6pm to 1am: keeping order, dishing out drinks and drugs and helping the young ‘uns along – most recently a scraggy lad with a buzzcut and a pinched face. He calls himself Gilli and can’t be more than fourteen.

_…the clouds will break my house_   
_and throw me from my room._   
_I’ll drown in the rainfall_   
_and float till I find you…_

“Uh… excuse me?”

Arthur opens his eyes, lets them meander over a denim jacket and a long neck and -  _Christ,_ those cheekbones were fucking delectable. He blinks, half-expecting that bone structure to be an illusion, and his gaze focuses on Blue Eyes from _The Pheonix’s Eye._

Arthur’s mouth drops open, ready for a _you again?_ to roll off his tongue.

Nothing comes. Instead, Blue Eyes thrusts something in Arthur’s face. “’S for you,” he says, except it catches in his throat and tumbles, cracked, into the air. Arthur squints up at him through rays of winter sun, wary; tugs out his earphone.

“Um.” Blue Eyes blinks behind his glasses. “I got you a sandwich? I, er, thought you might want one,” he adds, and then jiggles it before Arthur - as if to prove he’s telling the truth. Arthur stares at it: the malted bread, the curly font, the cardboard packaging and the plastic innards.  _Bacon, Lettuce and Tomato Sandwich_ , the curly font reads.

He hasn’t had bacon in years.

Slowly, Arthur shuts his mouth; fastens his cigarette between clenched teeth, like gangsters always do in shitty action films. Blue Eyes is babbling now, the tips of his ears having turned bright red.

“Um, I – I know it’s nothing much, and I wasn’t trying to be rude, or, you know—”

“S’okay,” Arthur says, barely managing to keep his voice steady. He reaches out for the gift, eases it from those long, pianist fingers. “Thank you.”

Blue Eyes stops biting his lip, stops shuffling, and simply… smiles. _Smiles_ , like the world is fucking hunky-dory and life is great. "I'm Merlin," he says, holding out a hand. Arthur hurls a questioning glance at the friendliness, the openness written all over Merlin's face. It's in every shadow, every line, every pore.

Arthur shakes it. “Arthur,” he replies, and Merlin’s smile widens until he is beaming.

 

 

 

* * *

  **ೋ**

 


	5. Chapter 5

  **ೋ**

╔════════════════════╗

  
 **SEVENTH**  
  
  
╚════════════════════╝

 

**_  
_**

****

**_December, 2006_ **

They settle into a routine, Arthur and Merlin. Arthur will go to the seventh bench from the East Gate and sit there from three until five, just as he always has, and at some point Merlin will arrive; armed with a lopsided grin, a sandwich and a packet of Hula Hoops.

But over time, the lunches evolve. The sandwich and Hula Hoops are soon accompanied by fruit (oranges mainly, after Merlin found out how much Arthur loves them) and sometimes a bar of Cadbury’s. Merlin jokes about fattening Arthur up, putting some meat on his bones every time a new item appears in the brown paper bag; be it a slab of millionaire shortbread Merlin’s friend Gwen has baked, a packet of Jelly Tots, a trio of scotch eggs. But in his eyes there is a quiet fear – something small that asks Arthur to hold his tongue and take his lunch like a good boy and just let Merlin _help_. Arthur is never sure what to make of it.

And the sandwiches themselves no longer come in plastic packaging with curly font. Now they are wrapped in a prism of tin foil, framed with thick slices of farmhouse bread and bursting at the crusts with filling.

Today, Arthur looks down at the egg mayo sandwich Merlin has made for him, and feels a little sick. The man in question is sat to his left, in his just-right jeans and just-right jacket with a knitted red scarf looping around his throat. With an ethereal calm he watches the river, his arms slack on the back of the bench, the heat of one wrist searing through Arthur’s parka.

“Why do you do this?” Arthur asks, glad when his voice is steady, the words tough. Merlin twists his head to look at him.

“What, d’you think I’m a pedo or something?”

“No.” Arthur says, irked by the amusement pasted on Merlin’s features. He glares down at the sandwich. “I just mean – no one does this kinda stuff for people like me. So why d'you bother?”

Merlin says nothing for a long time. Out of the corner of his eye Arthur sees him frowning, with a crease between his brows and a glaze across his eyes. Then Merlin reaches out, and places a hand on Arthur’s arm, and says:

“You’ve never been invisible to me.”

Arthur huffs with laughter. It trails off under the intensity of Merlin’s stare, a stare that is… solemn, steady, a little sad with old eyes set in a young face, eyes that remind him of his own when he'd sat polishing the bar at the _Sun_ with Ellie at his side. Arthur suddenly feels very small, trapped in the motions of something so much bigger than him – like he’s a whirring cog in a machine, a cog that won’t spin without another helping.

He swallows; asks, hoarsely: “Why me?”

Now it is Merlin’s turn to laugh. It’s a short sound, tired but kind all the same and he says, “Because you’re a prat?”

“I am not—!”

“No, no. I know.” Merlin shrugs and turns his gaze to a pair of ducks chasing each other on the river. “’Cause I saw you one day, when I was walking past the gate. Sitting here. Fucking up your lungs with those bloody fags of yours, wearing this mad coat” – he tugs at Arthur’s parka – “and. Well, you smiled.”

“I... smiled.”

“Yep.” Merlin arches an eyebrow. “Proper big one, too. And – well. I dunno. Since then I kept seeing you, just sat here doing fuck all, and I thought – I felt I should talk to you.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it,” Merlin replies. His tone is fond, his words gentle. “No ulterior motives, cross my heart and hope to die and all that bollocks. Now eat your lunch.”

 

• • • • • •

 

“If you could be a duck,” Merlin asks him one day, as he nicks a Hula Hoop from Arthur’s packet, “what duck would you be?”

Arthur blinks at him, baffled, and a secretive smile steals across Merlin’s face.

 

• • • • • •

 

On the 14th, it rains. Arthur hears it drumming on the windows of the block – _thud thud thud thud_. Beside him his client sleeps, knotted in the sheets, breaths deep and regular. On the bed and the floor are scattered twenties amongst scattered clothes, skin they had shed so Arthur could perform and the client could be rapt, hypnotised by the movements and words and tongue of a man who’d learned to act, learned to don a new face, a new skin, a whole new fucking mind just to get by.

It terrified him, sometimes. Who he became when a client stepped through that door.

Arthur listens to the rain. He watches the blinds rustle in the wind slipping through the open window, feels his headache pound against his skull; he smells the city air, tastes its smoke on his dirty little tongue.

He wonders what Merlin tastes like.

He wonders what Merlin would do if he knew.

 

• • • • • •

 

“Nice hat,” a familiar voice says. Arthur opens an eye.

“Best I could find.” He shrugs; takes a drag of his cigarette whilst Merlin slumps down next to him. “There was a red one with ‘BELIEVE IN LOVE’ on it. And the green one said ‘BELIEVE IN WEED’ and the pink one said—”

“The red one! Why didn’t you get the red one?”

“The pink one said ‘BELIEVE IN FAIRYTALES’. And it was glittery. With hearts stitched on it.”

“And you let that thing slide?”

“I like blue.” Arthur pouts. “Though I liked the orange one.”

“‘Believe in Ron Weasley’?”

“God, don’t you ever get bored? No, idiot. It said ‘Believe in Jesus’.”

“Ron Weasley _is_ Jesus.”

“Bollocks. If anyone’s Jesus from HP, it’s Dumbledore.”

Merlin grins. “Well, he’s got the beard, I ‘spose,” he says, and he settles back, looking very pleased with himself. Heat – unexpected, shameful – pools in Arthur’s stomach at the sight of him, all blue eyes and legs and ears and cheekbones; the kind of heat he gets when a client walks in and he’s taken too many poppers, the kind of heat they must get when he sweet-talks them into taking just a couple to “loosen up” before they get down to it, and in his whorish head the image blurs and shifts until it is Merlin beneath him, Merlin he is feeding poppers, Merlin he is touching, Merlin, Merlin, _Merlin_ —

—and his fag tumbles from his gaping mouth, down his too-big parka, skimming across his too-short jeans before it collapses onto the path.

Merlin’s wolf-whistle starts to fade into his head. “Jeez,” he says from afar; “you really are preoccupied. You weren’t listening, were you?”

“No.” Arthur swallows to make his voice less husky. “I was just, you know. Thinking.”

“About?”

“Nothing,” he says – except it is too quick, too hasty, and they both know it. Arthur shrinks into his parka whilst Merlin bites his lip and watches him with concern flashing in and out of his eyes like traffic lights flash from green to red. But then Merlin nods – sharp and quick, like an army general – and turns back to the river.

 

• • • • • •

 

With a heavy hand Arthur pulls his cigarette from his mouth; blows a jet of smoke into the air. He is weary to the point it is thick and oh so heavy on his bones… boy, his client had been insistent, demanding, way too fucking ruthless, rough and – and _wrong._  Still, Arthur had fucking gone with it. Customer is king and all that shit.

His gut rolls at the thought. Arthur shuts it up by picturing the tip he got for his trouble. _He was fucking loaded_ , he thinks, and his worn-out brain adds: _Loaded like a freight train, flyin’ like an aeroplane… feelin’ like a space brain…_

Arthur eases the fag back twixt his lips and drags deep. More tendrils of _Nightrain_ by Guns N’ Roses drift in and out of his head ( _rattlesnake suitcase… honey you can make my motor hum… Molotov cocktail with a match…_ ), and he is teetering on the edge of sleep when—

“Christ, you look crap.”

Arthur grunts in response. There is the familiar creak of the bench as Merlin sits next to him, and then his gaze strikes Arthur’s cheek – too worried for its own good, Arthur knows, because Merlin’s heart is bigger than the bloody Opera House in Sydney. It caters for so many people; too many, maybe, given Arthur is in the mix.

But Merlin never stops it catering.

Arthur forces his eyelids back. “M’ fine,” he says, and stretches his arms over his head to ease the stiffness in his muscles. He feels his hoodie and shirt ride upwards; feels cold fingers of wind brush across the sliver of exposed stomach and shivers at their touch. He is sagging back onto the bench when he adds, “jus’ bloody knackered, that’s all.”

Merlin is blushing. “You didn’t have to come.”

“Yeah, but I didn’t have any way to contact you. And then you’d be prancing ‘round here with your head up your arse trying to find me, all like, _hey Arth, where’d you go?_ , and maybe you’d do something dumb like call the rozzers.”

Merlin blinks at him. “Okay. Definitely sleep-deprived.”

“Four hours. That’s what I got,” Arthur mumbles, and out of the corner of his hooded eyes Merlin frowns.

“I thought you finished work at one?”

“Not last night. Kept busy.”

_Because the bloody client was unexpected and Aredian thought I could handle him._

“In a pub.” Merlin sounds sceptical. “You were busy for so long… in a pub… that you got four hours.”

Arthur is too tired to even roll his eyes, so he settles for a petulant “well, I wasn’t in the pub, was I?”

“Oh.” Merlin tugs at the cuffs of his jacket, suddenly shy. Arthur narrows his eyes at him. In the back of his head a horrified part of him unearths snapshots of Uther with that same expression, closed and cold, and flings them in Arthur’s face. Merlin is squirming now, his cheeks flaring pink again, his mouth snapping open and shut like a snagged fish until he finally blurts:

“So, er – did you have someone round?”

Arthur stares.

Merlin stares.

The ducks on the river stare.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Arthur scoffs eventually, flicking his fag onto the pavement and grinding it under the flapping sole of his shoe. But it doesn’t feel like enough; doesn’t feel enough like a barricade between the truth and so Arthur mutters darkly, loud enough for Merlin to hear:

“Huh, got better things to do with my time,” and God knows it takes all he has to pretend he doesn’t see hurt flicker across Merlin’s face.

 

• • • • • •

 

On Christmas Eve, Merlin appears with an honest to god picnic hamper even though there is frost on the grass and the river is half-iced over. He sets it on the bench with a thunk and a huge smile that makes Arthur feel warm inside; even with the memory of him and Elena and Elliot and Wayne picnicking floating in his head.

“So,” Merlin says. “I thought we should have lunch together for a change.”

He sits down and opens the hamper; pulls out two sets of turkey and cranberry sauce sandwiches, a box of cocktail sausages, and another box stuffed with cherry tomatoes. Then comes an orange for Arthur and a pear for Merlin, a neat little package of salami-wrapped cubes of cheese, a huge tube of Pringles – “hope ready salted is alright with you?” – two cartons of apple juice and two blocks of Christmas cake, complete with marzipan and royal icing.

“Fucking hell, Merls.” Arthur heaves his gaze away from the feast and up towards Merlin. “You didn’t have to do all this shit just for me—”

“Yeah, well. I wanted to.” Merlin tosses him his apple juice. “Especially since you won’t come to dinner tomorrow.”

“It’s not like that—”

“I know, I know. You said. You don’t want to intrude and all. It’s okay, I get it.” Merlin pulls his scarf tighter around his neck; starts to peel back the foil wrapped round his sandwiches. “Either way, I want you to have a good time, yeah? It’s Christmas. I couldn’t not do something special.”

“Actually—”

Merlin rolls his eyes. “Shut up and eat, Arth.”

“Yes, _Sire_.”

“Prat,” Merlin mutters through a mouthful of turkey and bread and cranberry sauce. Arthur mock-glares at him, but Merlin simply smiles; that smile of his that could put a megawatt light bulb to shame.

When he bites into his sandwich, Arthur is smiling too.

They work their way through the tomatoes next, then the sausages; but not without seeing who can fit the most in their mouth at once without chewing (Arthur wins, of course). The cheese cubes are vetoed after Merlin tries one, gags, and demands “how the fuck is the salami out of date already?”, at which Arthur laughs until his breath is wheezing and his sides honestly hurt. They open the Pringles instead, and mimic the absent ducks with the famous two-Pringle-duck-beak act for as long as they can before the salt makes their chapped lips sting, and once the crisps are gone start on their fruit and then their cake.

Arthur is halfway through his slice when Merlin swallows his last mouthful and reaches into the hamper. He pulls out a lumpy package, suffocated in Sellotape and tied with a thick gold ribbon, and Arthur’s mouth goes dry when he reads his name on the envelope taped to the wrapping paper.

“Merry Christmas!” Merlin shoves the package at him in a way that reminds Arthur of the first sandwich Merlin had thrust in his face. “Got this for you.”

“Christ, Merls.” His voice wobbles in the light of Merlin’s grin, stretching from ear to ear. “You… look, you really didn’t have—”

Merlin waves an airy hand. “Yeah, yeah, I know. But here it is and it’s all yours.” He jiggles the present until Arthur puts down his cake and takes it with shaking hands tinged blue from the cold.

“Now open it.”

Arthur rips his eyes from the looping handwriting on the envelope; swivels his head towards Merlin.

“But you already bought the food, and all the stuff before. The sandwiches and Hula Hoops, I need to pay you back for those—”

“You don’t owe me anything,” Merlin says, and he sounds so certain, so… so damn _sure_ that Arthur falters. He looks down at the present, wary, and Merlin’s lips twitch at the corners. “Alright?” He jabs his elbow into Arthur’s side. “I promise it’s nothing bad or scary, like _The Monster Book of Monsters_ or a Boggart—”

“Piss off.”

“So… you’ll open it?”

There is a beat of quiet in which Arthur’s scowl fades away, melting into something raw and sad and a little rough at the edges… and Merlin has seen this face somewhere before, he is sure of it. But the time and the place elude him, slip through his fingers like smoke: and he can only watch as Arthur’s hands glide over the crinkled Sellotape, over the edges of the green envelope.

“Card later,” Merlin says thickly. He reaches across and pulls it off with a neat jerk, but Arthur doesn’t notice. Hazy eyes drink in the cartoon reindeer and the haphazard strips of Sellotape, and those hands are still drifting absently across the paper, light and careful – as if the package is a living, breathing thing and not just a squishy lump.

“I’ll repay you one day,” Arthur says. His voice is low, earnest, strong in a way that makes Merlin think of a king – or a shadow of one. The thought makes the hair on the back of his neck stand to attention, and he swallows when Arthur finishes with:

“For everything. I swear.”

Now Arthur’s hands are tugging at the ribbon, tugging until it falls away in a flurry of gold. Then the Sellotape: picking and peeling and picking and peeling until the paper is free, and he pulls it back to reveal—

Jeans.

A brand new pair of jeans.

“Merlin,” he says, awed. His hands are shaking when he lifts them from their bed of paper. “Merls – God, these must have cost shitloads—”

“Nope.” Merlin is beaming. “I hope I got the right size. We’re about the same height but you’re a little skinnier, somehow. My mum would have a bloody heart attack if she knew, I tell you.”

“They’re – they look great.” Arthur’s eyes rove over the black denim, gently acid-washed; the yellow stitches, the hems, the belt loops that are all sewn in place. “Thank you. _Thank_ you.”

“Anytime,” Merlin says, and he watches with glee as Arthur folds the jeans back up and slips them carefully into his rucksack.

For a long time they don’t speak. Merlin listens to the busker down the path playing old Nirvana hits on a battered Gibson acoustic, and halfway through _Polly_ he hears the tell-tale flicker of Arthur’s lighter. The bench creaks as Arthur leans back.

“I have something for you, too,” he says suddenly, words slipping round the butt of his cigarette (how he talks past it with good elocution, Merlin will never know). Arthur stares at the wonky eyelets of his Converse to keep from blushing too much when Merlin glances at him and in a sorry attempt to soothe his nerves he takes a drag of his fag, only to pull it free and hold it in the crook of two fingers.

“But, erm. It’s not a thing. Well, it is but – I don’t have it on me. Because it’s not that kind of thing.”

Another drag, this time with fumbling hands. _  
_

“It’s just – you always get me all this stuff. The food, mainly. And – and I want to pay you back.” Arthur dares to look at Merlin. The smoking manwhore going after the prince, that’s what he feels like, but he drives the words out of his mouth all the same.

“So I wondered if you’d – you’d go out to dinner with me? Not as a date.”  _Because you deserve better than that._ “But just, like, as – as friends. And I’d pay for everything.”

Merlin sighs. “Arth—”

“Look, I’m not broke. I’ve got some savings.” He thinks of the boxes under his bed, stuffed with twenties and fifties he’s keeping so one day he can Get the Fuck Out. “I can pay, easy.”

“I’d still feel bad.”

“You think I don’t?” He snaps, and Merlin flinches. Hasty, Arthur drags deep on his cigarette; and once he has shoved the smoke out his lungs he rests his free hand on Merlin’s knee and fucking begs because maybe... just maybe, it's worth the blow to his pride.

Maybe.

That is why the words "please, Merls" spill from his tongue, words born of a hope that finally feels real after years of false leads. For a second there is no response, no noise but the city and the busker strumming  _Drain You_ , and then a spark lights in Merlin's eye and he says:

“There’s no way out, is there?”

"Nope." Arthur quirks a brow; slides his cigarette between his lips.

Merlin quirks one back. 

 

 

 

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	6. Chapter 6

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 **WASTED**  
  
  
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****

****

**_January 1 st, 2007_ **

It takes Merlin a few moments to spot Arthur now the parka is absent, revealing a pale blue button down (creased ever so slightly, as if ironed by clumsy hands), and a burgundy cardigan that actually fits Arthur’s wasted frame. It looks brand new and is surprisingly well-made, too; like the jeans he has belted around his waist.

Merlin’s jeans.

He is slouched against the wall below the hanging sign that reads _The Round Table: Food All Day, Kids Eat Free!_ , armed with a lit cigarette, staring down at the pavement with lidded eyes. The warm light from the restaurant bathes his hair and skin and eyelids in glowing gold, and – whilst it may be as cheesy as _Always_ by Bon Jovi – Merlin thinks of angels and halos and the divine.

Then his heart aches, because Arthur doesn’t know how beautiful he is. He wouldn’t believe it even if he did, fuck.

Suddenly nervous, Merlin runs a hand through his hair, and – oh, Christ. Arthur catches the motion out the corner of his eye; lifts his head, steps out into the moonlight… but it’s wrong, now, wrong because his face is silvery and hardened and not Pendragon gold—

_Pendragon gold?_

Merlin blinks, bemused; is set to mull over the meaning of such an odd little thought, except Arthur has met him halfway down the pavement, outside a boarded-up shop front with a peeling strip of type ( _Taeliesin’s Ltd_ ) at its head. His smile draws Merlin in like a moth to a light.

Merlin smiles back, tentative, as they stop and hover for a moment because there is no bench here: no lunch to offer and take and eat, no river to be mesmerised by, no ducks to watch. But then Arthur shoves his hands into his pockets and hums with amusement around the butt of his cigarette. His eyes run down Merlin’s front.

Merlin frowns. “What’s so funny?”

“You’re late,” Arthur says. “And your buttons are wonky.”

Merlin looks down and glares at the uneven hem of his shirt. Arthur is laughing softly when Merlin reaches out to fix the bottom few; then steps forwards, and reaches out himself. With gentle hands Arthur pushes buttons in and out and in and out of the plaid fabric – stood so close that Merlin feels his heat, smells his shampoo, has his eyes smart from the smoke curling out the cigarette end – until the hem is even.

“There,” Arthur says, tugging the shirt to straighten it. “Proof of your incompetence gone. _Vavoomph_.”

“Erm. Thanks?”

“S’alright. Now come on, I booked a table and it isn’t gonna hang around forever,” Arthur says, and after tossing his burnt-out fag into the gutter he takes Merlin’s wrist and all but frogmarches him to the restaurant door.

They are seated at a table near the back by a thin-faced, curly-haired lad who whips a small slip of paper reading _Reserved: King_ out of the ordered clutter of cutlery and glasses before launching into a pre-meal spiel:

“Hello and welcome to the Round Table. My name’s Mordred and I’ll be serving you tonight. Drinks?”

“Glass of white, thanks,” Arthur replies. “ _Mer_ lin can have anything but water,” he adds, and hurls a look that reads _if you dare to be a charitable little shit I will break you_ in Merlin’s direction.

“Same, then,” Merlin tells Mordred, and once the lad has gone he narrows his eyes at Arthur. Arthur only leans back in his chair, eyes aglitter with a mix of mirth and dented pride as he drinks in the blush on Merlin’s cheeks and the red tips of his ridiculous ears. Then Merlin sighs.

“You saw right through me, eh?” He shifts a little in his chair under Arthur’s gaze; tries to win him over with the rueful smile that always made the steel in his mum’s brow weather, just a little, and sure enough Arthur fidgets under its warmth.

“Mm, well. I know what you’re like. Sabotaging your scheme was easy-fuckin’-peasy.”

“Easy-peasy? Who even says that nowadays?”

“Me. Obviously.”

Merlin grins. “You just sounded like Snape,” he says; and after hunching his shoulders and wiping his face clean of emotion he copies Arthur, Alan Rickman style. For his trouble he gets kicked under the table. “I bet you’d be in Slytherin.”

Arthur snorts. “Huh, and my middle name’s Xenophilius.”

Merlin opens his mouth to ask what actually is Arthur’s middle name, but Mordred reappears with the wine and a pair of menus tucked underarm. Merlin is cut off by the _thunk_ of glasses hitting the table and Mordred’s cheery “here you are, wine and menus. Today’s special is Leon’s Salmon Supreme, with whiskey and lime cream and new potatoes. Take all the time you need”.

So Merlin asks his question once Mordred has gone, and he doesn’t miss the shiver of fear that crosses Arthur’s face when the words are in the air, revolving around the vase of paper flowers between them.

“Marvolo,” Arthur says, but when Merlin gives him a withering looks he backtracks. “James Louis,” he mutters instead, and quickly opens his menu so he can pretend he can’t feel the weight of Merlin’s stare on his shoulders. “Yours?”

“Don’t have one.”

“Typical. Oh, and – if you pick the cheapest thing here, I might just have to kill you.”

“Might?”

“I used to do karate,” Arthur says gravely. “It was a sight to behold.”

“For all the wrong reasons, I’m guessing.”

“Laugh all you want, _Mer_ lin.” Arthur snaps his menu shut. “You’ll still get your skinny ass kicked.”

So Merlin surrenders and orders himself a pork dish with apple, shallots and red cabbage that has Arthur smiling into his glass of wine, and once Mordred has gone they talk idly about literature and dolphins and blue whales and giraffes, and the art of making good coffee and Power Rangers and politics and Axl Rose and old Disney films (mainly _Peter Pan_ and _The Sword in the Stone_ , because they’re Arthur’s favourites), and at one point they touched briefly on school and home and family - those everyday little things Arthur has always kept under wraps. They talk until Mordred comes back with Merlin’s pork and Arthur’s salmon and a whole bloody bottle of wine because Arthur is more than a little mad but exceptionally, utterly brilliant.

Tonight he is shining more than ever, in what Merlin can’t help but think of as proper clothes with a big smile on his face (one that Merlin likes to think he has conjured up instead of the wine). At their little table Arthur is… radiant, so – so _alive_ it makes Merlin’s heart tremble with delight. And maybe it is the wine loosening Arthur’s tongue and letting it fire off names from his past – Kay and Morgie and El – but Merlin feels as though he has finally broken through all of Arthur’s guises and walls and barbed wire fences, and can’t stop smiling back.

They keep talking until their plates are scraped clean and it’s time to order dessert. Arthur arches a teasing eyebrow when Merlin gets a Toffee Fudge Sundae – “remind me how old you are again, _Mer_ lin?” – and picks a slice of chocolate-expresso torte for himself. They sit in silence for a while after that, surrounded by the clink of cutlery on china and the warm hum of voices. Arthur is watching snow spiral past the window in a pathetic flurry customary to England alone. It does not settle; only melts under the orange squares of restaurant light flung onto the pavement.  

“Is Arthur your real name?”

Arthur tears his gaze away from the street. His face is no longer pensive, but is morphing into a frown that tugs a thin sheen of nervous sweat across Merlin’s body. “Why wouldn’t it be?”

“The table was reserved in the name of King. I just thought – you know, if you put the two together… ‘s a funny coincidence.”

The frown attempts to flip into a smile, but it is half-hearted; in the end, Arthur just shrugs. “Yeah, well. Had to change my last name, didn’t I?”

“From?”

“You’d recognise it.”

“Why’s that a bad thing?”

“Because no one is supposed to fucking know what happened to me!” Arthur’s voice is bitter, harsh, bordering on the edge of shrill and he twists his face back towards the window so he can glare at the stupid snow rather than the wide-eyed, innocent Merlin opposite him. “’Sides, if half the fuckers on the street knew who I was they’d start chopping off bits of me to post to my dad, like they do in films ‘cause they’d think he’d actually pay to get me back.” Arthur sighs. “He’s pretty rich.”

Merlin swallows. “Millionaire?”

“Eleventh richest man in Britain.” The words are so soft Merlin only just manages to catch them. “In 2003, anyway.”

“Fuck.”

Arthur grunts in reply.

He glares at the snow and Merlin swirls his wine around in his glass until the desserts arrive. When they do, Merlin nudges Arthur under the table with his knee, relieved when those hard eyes soften and the tension in his jaw and shoulders dissolves; and when he offers Arthur a fragile smile, he gets one in return.

 

• • • • • •

 

**_January 3 rd, 2007_ **

“I can’t believe you didn’t tell me!” Merlin is waving his arms wildly as if it will help get his point across, but in reality all it gets him is stares from the old man and the two kids by the river throwing pieces of bread to the ducks.

“I didn’t think it was important,” Arthur says. “That’s all.”

“Christ on a bike, what kind of person doesn’t think their own bloody birthday is important?” Merlin snatches Arthur’s unopened packet of Hula Hoops and rips into it. “God, I want to kill you right now. Painfully. With concentrated sulphuric acid and a flannel and a couple of kitchen knives.”

Arthur pauses with his sandwich (cheese and pickle) halfway to his mouth. “You have a very, very warped imagination.”

Merlin throws a Hula Hoop at his head. Arthur scowls as it bounces off his temple. “Look, you can’t be mad at me on my birthday. You’re supposed to wait on me hand and foot all day long. Pledge yourself to me for twenty four hours. Do all I command."

Merlin doesn’t smile, and for a terrifying moment Arthur is so sure he has lost him for good; so sure that tomorrow Merlin will not come to the park with his sandwiches - that he won't ever come again, but will simply live and breathe and melt back into a city of millions and leave Arthur all alone with his clients and patrons of the _Sun_ for company. Distressed, Arthur twists his hands in his lap and blurts:

“’Sides, it’s not like I’ve done anything great for it in ages. I smoked a joint one year. Played Tetris.”

“God, you do live on the wild side.” Merlin barks with laughter and tosses a Hula Hoop into his mouth. Relief flutters frail wings in Arthur's heart; guides his hand into his parka pocket. It comes out clutching a packet of Marlboros, a packet he jiggles at Merlin with a waggle of his eyebrows. “Well," Arthur says, as the cigarettes rattle around inside; "we French have a thirst for adventure.”

Merlin throws another Hula Hoop at him but misses. “You’re mad. You know that, right? And you’re half-French. Not French-French.”

“How eloquently expressed.”

“Oh my God, _shut up_.”

Arthur smirks. “With pleasure,” he says, and one hand eases a cigarette twixt his lips as the other goes hunting for his lighter.

 

• • • • • •

 

**_January 7 th, 2007_ **

“You know,” Merlin says, “I don’t know much about you.”

Arthur sighs. “If you come out with a cringey line from some sappy romance book—”

“No! God, no.” Merlin pulls a face. “Look. I know you work as a barman, do deliveries for your boss sometimes, used to live on the street. I know you used to play rugby and cricket. I know that you’re fluent in French and love Marmite, could eat it in bloody spoonfuls; I know you had a friend called Kay once and your favourite book is _Sherlock Holmes_ and that you bite your nails and hate having your photo taken and can play piano, and I know you think Slash is God and that MPs are dicks, but…”

Merlin shrugs. The rest is left unspoken, the fusillade of thoughts Merlin must have wanted to put into words but didn’t know how to – not without pushing Arthur too far with talk of the past and his family and why he had to leave his home, why he had to sleep on the street, why he was _here_ … and if Arthur won’t talk about those things does Merlin really know him at all?

Arthur swallows down the bile that has risen in his mouth. “Merlin…”

“Hm?”

“It’s… it’s not you,” Arthur says, words careful, voice hoarse. Shit. When has he ever been known for his tact, his talent with words? “I swear it’s not you. I just… I don’t like intimacy. Not a lot. ‘S the kinda thing that can kill you, out on the street.”

He pauses and takes a deep breath, eyes following the ducks on the river as they paddle around in circles. “And – and maybe I’m not a real street kid anymore – I mean, I have a flat and a job but if that all goes to shit, then it’s just me to sort it out and – and I’d have to leave everything behind. Go somewhere new. Always – I’ve always got to rely on myself,” Arthur adds, and in mind’s eye he sees Elliot and Elena and Wayne, dead or distant after he pulled away from them all those years ago. “I learnt that the hard way.”

Arthur dares to look at Merlin, sat by his side in his jacket and his jeans and his scarf, and Merlin simply looks back, calm and unruffled and… accepting, Arthur wants to think, but that doesn’t seem to fit with the tightness of Merlin’s lips, with the glimmer of some unnameable thing in his blue eyes.

Hastily, Arthur drags his eyes down to the pocket his hand has snaked into, and they watch as his cigarettes appear. They were the closest thing to a friend he had before Merlin and his sandwiches; they were soothing and faithful and familiar. But now… now Merlin is those things and so much more, soothing and faithful and familiar but wonderful and kind and charming and gentle and too beautiful for words, too.

Almost as if he has heard these thoughts, Merlin looks at him and smiles – not his best smile, not the one that lights up his eyes as well as his face, but a smile nonetheless. A smile for Arthur.

“But you’re not alone anymore,” Merlin whispers, and he reaches out. At first Arthur thinks he is going to rest a hand on his arm, maybe his thigh… but Merlin’s hand dips instead into Arthur’s pocket; and when it resurfaces, Merlin gives him his lighter.

 

• • • • • •

 

**_January 18 th, 2007_ **

Aredian summons Arthur into to his office around midday and backs him into a corner with his words and pale, wolf-like eyes and the recording of a single telephone call he’s ripped off Arthur’s bugged phone. The sound of his own voice makes Arthur’s blood run cold, turns his heart to ice under the ribcage cracking with the weight of dread and fury and desperate, blazing denial. But it is the second voice that injects guilt into his veins; and this guilt is unrelenting, dragging him down and down and down in an endless of spiral of self-hatred.

And when he asks himself why it had to be like this, there is only one reason, and that is himself.

 

 

 

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	7. Chapter 7

 

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**FRAGMENTS**  
  
  
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**_January 19 th, 2007_ **

The bench is empty.

There is no misshapen lump of man under parka. There is no cigarette smoke to taste, to cough on, to watch as it twists up into the sky; no blonde hair poking out from the blue bobble hat Arthur bought from Camden Market for one quid, the one with BELIEVE IN YOURSELF winding around the edges in perky white letters. No Conversed feet on the cracking tarmac of the path – just white, ashy cigarette butts trembling in the cold breeze. No gentle hands. No chapped lips Merlin aches to kiss but dares not brush with his own. No newly-jeaned legs folded beneath the bench. There is… no body.

No Arthur.

And all Merlin can do is stare.

He is frozen on the spot, frozen like a waxwork in Madame Tussauds. Hadn’t he wanted to take Arthur there? Of course he had. He wanted – _wants_ – to take Arthur everywhere. He wanted to let him see Merlin’s favourite café and the used DVD shop on Gedref Street and stupid waxworks and the city from the top of the London Eye, and the sharks at the aquarium on South Bank and the Tower of London from within – he knows Arthur would like that, like peering into the dungeons and standing on the battlements and Merlin would joke about him being king even though somehow it seemed… right.

But Arthur isn’t here. Why isn’t he here? In Merlin’s head there is a war: one side screaming _there’s  a rational explanation!_ and _why are you panicking?_ and _just one day_ and _you sure he isn’t just late?_ as the other roars back, wild and unchecked: _what explanation?_ and _he isn’t here he isn’t here, fuck _and _but he always comes, always, always, ALWAYS_.

Merlin scrubs at his eyes with the palm of his hand. Christ, blubbing like a girl wasn’t going to do him any favours. And – and there has to be an explanation. Has to be. Maybe Arthur had a hard night at work and slept in late. Maybe he is spending the day with someone else. Maybe his boss (Arthur rarely brought him up, only ever implied that he was to be deemed God; or at least, that’s what Merlin picks up from the way Arthur jerks upright when his Nokia buzzes in his pocket, and Merlin knew his boss was the only contact on there before Merlin keyed in his number) has deliveries for Arthur to do all day.

God knows what of. But the pay had to be good – no one would deliver from Hackney to Croydon to Southwark to Redbridge to Hounslow to Kensington day in, day out just for a favour. And yet that coupled with Arthur’s job of barkeep wouldn’t earn him even half as much as he let slip at the Round Table, even if it had just been a shrug and a slightly slurred _coupla hundred every night. Get good tippers, see…_

Merlin sits on the bench. _Thud_. His legs are wobbly, like the Hartley’s Lime Jelly he’d been eating straight from the packet last night whilst watching _Doctor Who_. It feels like a lifetime ago. He was warm, then, snuggled up in his dinosaur blanket on the sofa. Now he is cold all over. Icy. Frozen with… oh, there are too many things whirling in his head to pinpoint – just flashes of fear and unease and _is he alright?_ and hurt and confusion. His satchel is a heavy weight against his thigh. Accusatory, almost.

 _Maybe you pushed too much_ , it says. _Maybe he was just using you and you were too stupid to realise,_ that’s what comes next; and it’s too terrible to contemplate, so unbearable Merlin bites back a whimper and forces himself to think of something else—

—so he thinks of the sandwiches he’d made that morning, in great haste; he’d overslept and his mum was calling from the living room that it was a miracle Gaius put up with this at least twice a week whilst Merlin tried desperately not to butter too hard, else the bread would tear and become a holey, buttery, shitty mush that Arthur didn’t deserve.

He thinks of the Hula Hoops he bought at the newsagent on the run to work because the multipack had run out and his mum forgot to buy more the day before. He thinks of the oranges piled on the fruit bowl at home. Arthur’s oranges, his mum called them. Neither she nor Merlin touch them.

Just Arthur.

And now he’s… gone. Merlin doesn’t know his address. Where he works. If he doesn’t come back…

No! Merlin’s hands curl into fists. No. _He will_ , he thinks, pleads, begs as the ducks chase each other upriver and one pulls away, leaving the other paddling frantically in its wake. _He will_.

 

• • • • • •

 

**_January 21 st, 2007_ **

Still no Arthur.

Merlin makes sandwiches anyway. He sits with them still wrapped up in his bag, wrapped up until 5pm has been and gone and he knows that Arthur has not come. Again.

Only then does he peel back the foil and bite into the farmhouse bread and the bacon or cheese or lettuce or tomato – whatever he has chucked in that day. He hardly tastes what he chews. Maybe it’s the guilt whirring in his bones with each bite that does it, but he eats all the same. He tucks into the Hula Hoops. He eats whatever sweet treat he’s wheedled off Gwen.

He always leaves the oranges, though.

Today Merlin is licking his fingers clean of grease from a red velvet cupcake when _Highway to Hell_ blares out of his jacket pocket. His ringtone. And as it reaches his ears, his heart flutters with hope – stupid hope that stills as soon as he sees Gwen’s name on the caller display.

“Hello?”

“Merlin! Oh, thank God, you picked up.” Shit, he hasn’t heard Gwen sound so frantic since Lance asked her out and she didn’t know what to wear on their first date. “Merls, you have to get back here right now—”

“What’s going on?” He is on his feet already; walking towards the exit. _Please say it’s all going to be fine oh God it’s only four what if he comes later?_ “What happ—?”

“Now. Right now. I don’t care what you and Arthur are up to” (Merlin bites back a bitter laugh; he and who, now?) “you have to get back. She’s come round—”

“Who has? Gwen, Christ! What's going—?”

“Your _patient_ , Merls.” The eye roll is audible even to him. “Who d’you think I mean? So if you’re not here in fifteen minutes I _will_  – crap, Soph needs me ASAP. Why did I agree to be transferred to the ICU? Anyway – see you soon, yeah? Now run like the wind, Bullseye.”

“Gw—!”

The line goes dead.

 

• • • • • •

 

**_January 26 th, 2007_ **

He’s being followed again.

Arthur scowls at the wads of dried-out gum littering the pavement; scowls at his Converse, the grubby laces, the wonky eyelets, as he feels the sole of his left shoe flap with each step. _Snap, snap, snap_. He turns the corner – into Deira Way – with eyes locked on his back.

 _Well fuck you, Aredian_.

He needs a cigarette. He has a headache from the poppers last night. Breakfast was a no-go after the client took him back to bed, hungry for his money’s worth, just as Arthur was cracking eggs into a bowl and now his stomach grumbles – as if to say, _why would you be a filthy whore when you could have topped me up good?_ The grumble evolves into a growl when he lopes past a burger van, one that’s all grease and fat and dry stale baps that are more grey than brown. Arthur wrinkles his nose. Huh, burgers? Like they were half as good as Merlin’s sandwi—

—shit! Stop. Oh God, backtrack – Arthur James Louis, oh God you fucking twat _why_ did you just think that? Panicked, Arthur swings his eyes up and down the street, hunting for something to hone in on; but there are just lines of nondescript cars with peeling paint, ranks of slate-coloured houses, a swastika sprayed onto a wall with sloppy lettering next to it blaring _HITLER AIN’T DEAD PUNKS!!!!_ , a gaggle of drooping trees in someone’s garden… there! A schoolgirl. Skirt sinfully short, blouse unbuttoned to her sternum, sashaying up the road in canvas pumps. And even though he isn’t a ladies’ man Arthur makes himself think of the curve of her hips and her heart-shaped face, freckled and milky white; because then he doesn’t have to think of Merlin and his pride when Arthur mentioned (tentatively, back before Christmas) he was thinking of applying to sixth-form college; then he wouldn’t have to think of smile that made Merlin’s eyes crinkle at the corners—

Curve of the hips. Heart-shaped face. Freckles. Milky white.

 _Looks like a whore,_ his head wants to add, but Arthur can hardly condemn her when he’s one of the best. That’s why Aredian kept him on – there’s always someone keen to get into Aredian’s place, but half of them don’t make the cut. And Arthur was popular. Coveted. He gets booked months in advance. Kicking him out would lose Aredian profit. So the best play with Arthur, and he plays with the best.

The girl turns up a driveway and disappears. Alone again.

It’s just him.

Him and his tail.

Arthur risks another peek over his shoulder under the pretence of peering at house numbers. The man is stocky and stout, half his face shadowed by the Stetson hat pulled down low over his eyes. His coat is shit-brown but crafted from buttery-looking leather; his jeans and boots dark and scuffed.

He keeps walking.

Sixty-one, sixty-two, sixty-three… Christ, does this street ever end? Arthur glares at the graceful curve in the road ahead. He’s cold and hungry and on edge – old Stalker Boy and his nicotine craving aren’t doing him any favours, that’s for sure, and it’s 3:35pm and he could be at the park _right now_ with Merlin, watching the ducks, eating his sandwich and Hula Hoops and oranges…

…seventy-eight, seventy-nine, eighty.

He needs to stop thinking about Merlin. And his blue eyes and ridiculous ears and his red scarf and the denim jacket that smelled of Persil, even though sometimes there was a trace of hospital smell – cheap disinfectant and blood and chemicals and drugs, a smell that turned Arthur’s blood to ice at the memories it stirred in the cauldron that was his mind: weights on his shoulders. A limp hand in his, cold, dead…so cold. Beeps and pings and whirs and harsh rattling breathing. Creased bedclothes. Tubes. Wires. Bruised eyelids. Bandages… _there’s been no change_ …

Boy, he needs a fag.

Still walking, he draws one from his pocket; hums with relief as it flares to life and the tension in his shoulders and bones and head starts to wane.

Ninety-six, ninety-seven, ninety-eight… ninety-nine.

Finally.

Arthur vaults over the gate with a _whoosh_ of his parka and trots up the garden path. Weeds claw at the denim of his jeans. An overturned wheelie bin spews litter – empty beer cans, washed-out TV guides, plastic wrap from ready-made meals, used teabags piled on top of rotting copies of _The Sun_ – all over the strip of paving. Picking his way over the mound, Arthur hops onto the porch with a single bound and jams his finger on the doorbell.

“Jesus Chris’,” he hears a voice holler at the tinny _Jingle Bells_ the doorbell shrieks out. “Jesus fuckin’ Chris’! It’s on’y Tuesday, Bart – get the fuck outta here, y’ hear me? Yeah? Else I’ll—”

Arthur whips his cigarette out of his mouth. Then he leans down – so he is level with letterbox – pushes back the brass flap, and shouts as best he can over _oh what fun it is to ride in a one horse open sleigh, hey!_ :

“It’s not Bart. I’ve been sent by the Witchfinder, so come on and open up.”

“Jesus Chris’,” the voice says again, but there are shuffling footsteps – lumbering, like a bear’s. Once his cigarette is safely flanked by his lips Arthur leans back, swings his backpack off his shoulder and delves within for the parcel. As always, there is only the recipient scrawled on the box: _C. Kanen_. No address. No stamp. Just duct tape and cardboard and a single, lonely name.

A shadow – large and hulking – appears behind the frosted glass of the door. “The Witchfinder, eh?” says the voice, and Arthur nods. He can see the bulbous brown eye peering at him through the crack between the door and its frame, but it is Aredian’s chosen alias that sends a ripple of cold fear up his spine. The Witchfinder. Witches and wizards and – and magic users were out there… honest to God ones,  _real_ ones who aren't Harry Potters and Hermione Grangers but manic and - and bad in every sense and aching to rule…

He imagines Aredian getting on with his dad famously.

Parcel delivered (a mere swap of possession; no more words spoken), Arthur skirts the rubbish mound again, vaults back over the gate – “hey! An’ jus’ who d’you think y’ are, Spiderman?” comes the voice of C. Kanen – and he is away, back down the street.

He doesn’t miss Stalker Boy materialising from behind a battered Ford just six cars away, but this is Life now. Aredian doesn’t trust him to do anything but fuck his clients and manage a bar and deliver cardboard boxes – but only with one of his guys on his back.

 

• • • • • •

 

**_January 29 th, 2007_ **

“Tell me about yourself, Merlin,” Yvette says during her daily check-up. Her voice is still a little hoarse after disuse, but her French accent can’t be missed and Merlin has to bite back a smile at the way she pronounces his name: _Merleen_.

“I like Harry Potter,” he replies. “And coffee. I live in Hackney with my mum.”

 _And I have a friend called Arthur._ _Or a once-friend._

 _I don’t really know what to think anymore_.

 

• • • • • •

 

**_February 4 th, 2007_ **

He runs a hand through his hair, eyeing himself in the mirror. Gaunt. Grey-skinned. Handsome? Maybe. Yes. No. Not unless any guys looking were keen on blonde weary manwhores with bright blue eyes, a fondness for cigarettes and a blue button down (the same one he wore to the not-date with Merlin) that once fitted but now hangs a little loose, as if he’s borrowed one of his dad’s.

Arthur turns away from the sink and pads back into his room. It is plain, barer than most of Aredian’s guys – there are no posters of Michael Jackson or Green Day or Stars Wars or _Keep Calm and Carry On!_ tacked onto the walls, no patterned bed linen (Sefa’s was duck egg blue with pink polka dots; Jack’s was navy and covered with cartoon UFOs his clients were apparently very fond of). His floor is devoid of clothes, his bedside table empty aside from a big brass alarm clock he haggled for at Camden and a glass of water that is three days old. He doesn’t bother making it his, leaving his mark; it’s not Home in the same way their bench is. Was.

On the back of the door hangs Arthur’s parka, under which lie his shoes, perfectly straight, eyes ahead. He pulls them on, unhooks his parka, and leaves without looking back. _Snap, snap, snap_ sings his flapping sole.

He has just locked up when out of the shadows a voice says, “off to work, I see.”

It takes all of Arthur’s willpower not to bridle. “That’s right, sir,” he replies, careful to keep his tone neutral and his expression schooled into something a little too cold for anyone but Saruman. Or maybe Uther.

Aredian glides from the patch of dark he was stood in until half his body is lit by the hard strip lights on the ceiling. Seeing him and those pale wolf-eyes… there is more than dread weaving up Arthur’s spine, now: hopelessness and fury and loathing, all of which will crumple into nothing before a true spark can ignite. Aredian is funny like that. He makes all the vipers within you surge up, only to stave them away with his eyes and those eyes alone.

“Can I help you, sir?” Arthur says, voice clipped as he slips his arms into the sleeves of his coat. Unbidden, strings of the recording – that one stupid fucking call – leak into his brain: _yeah… you turn left just before the Starbucks on – what? Of course there’s a Starbucks, idiot… about six thirty… look, you can’t miss it, alright?… and I’m paying, remember…_

“Hm.” Aredian taps the butt of his cane on the floor; jerks Arthur out of his reverie. “Not particularly. Not unless you’re riding a client of mine… which you are not, at this moment in time. Pity.”

“My apologies, sir.”

Aredian grunts and dismisses him with a wave of the cane, and he is turning away when Arthur zips up the parka; his back all too exposed to Arthur’s middle finger and the thin sheen of tears in his little boy eyes. Then Arthur turns and storms out of the building, out into the sobering bite of cold. By the time he reaches the _Sun_ , the tides in his head are lulling, and when business starts to roll he has no choice but to don the friendly barman persona, else he faces Aredian’s wrath. Not that he hasn’t faced that bitch already. And he hasn’t got so much left to lose, really… just a flat and a job (jobs?) he fucking hates with every cell in his body and a too-big parka and well-cut jeans and safety and security, of a kind, and a steady inflow of cash to buy food and pay the rent and get his beloved cigarettes…

Ha! Guess he ought to stay after all. It’s not like Aredian is going to let him go, anyway: who’d let go of their best man – their manwhore king?

 

• • • • • •

 

**_February 5 th, 2007_ **

When Merlin gets home, the oranges are gone.

For a heartbeat he can’t move, immobilised by the gaping gap in the fruit bowl where the orange tower belonged. But his voice eases back into him when the moment is done, and from his throat crawls a husky “mum? You home?”, even though he knows she is at work and will be until _EastEnders_ starts at six.

Merlin puts his bag down with a _thunk_ ; moves on automatic to the kitchen. Flick of the switch. Mug. Teabag. Three sugars. He forces himself to stand and look at the steam puffing out of the kettle and does his best not to think of Arthur when he drowns the teabag and sugar in boiling water. He does his best not to think of Arthur when he rescues the teabag and lobs it in the bin – discards it now it is useless.

Is that what Arthur had done? Dropped him when he got bored?

No. Merlin’s fingers tighten around the handle of the mug – a Scrabble one, with **M 3 **on its front. Arthur was – is – better than that. He always was. Merlin hadn’t missed the coy looks from under those blonde lashes; hadn’t missed the soft smiles down at lunches Merlin brought to Arthur in brown, paper bags; hadn’t missed the way Arthur’s eyes lit up when he saw Merlin ambling down the path towards him at their bench with the ducks hovering nearby; hadn’t missed the awkward pauses when Arthur tried to say the right things or muddle his way through something he didn’t want to talk about; hadn’t missed the way Arthur’s hands and eyes and soul came alive when explaining something he loved; hadn’t missed the slow, steady opening of Arthur’s floodgates, because Arthur needed Merlin just as much as Merlin needed – needs, God how he needs Arthur… just being with him soothed Merlin's nerves like a balm. Is he safe? Is he happy? Is it better this way?

Merlin didn’t know. Despite what Arthur said, he _wanted_ intimacy. He feared it. But he wanted it, Merlin saw that in his eyes many a time, and Merlin was so… so convinced he would be the one to unravel the mystery that is Arthur James Louis ‘King’.

Merlin takes a sip of his tea. It burns his top lip and sears his tongue, and he slams the mug down so hard tea slops over the rim onto the countertop, splashes onto the kettle, falls as beige flecks on his hand. “Shit!” he cries, grateful for an excuse to be angry; and Merlin steps back, turns, ready to reach for a tea towel when—

— _crash!_

A thread of pain lances up his arm from his elbow. In him, deep down under his ribs, something warm and golden quietly awakens… and when Merlin twists back and spies the glass falling off the draining board, it starts to slow; as if he is trapped in a TV and the viewer is stabbing a slow-mo button on their remote. His movements are measured – dreamlike, almost, when Merlin swings his arm up; lets the cool glass settle in his palm.

As silently as it came, his magic seeps away. Merlin stands with the glass in one hand, a bleeding elbow, a burnt top lip and a searing tongue and thinks: _I can find him._ The thought grows in strength and size and power until it is in blaring capitals on the backs of his eyes: _I CAN FIND HIM_ , and Merlin is so elated, blown full of hope and relief and happiness that he jumps up and down with joy (the resident below the flat bangs onto the ceiling with a walking stick and hollers through the thin floorboards, demanding he stop bouncing around like a lunatic lest the newly-installed light fitting breaks, because _sonny boy, you bet you’ll be paying every goddamn penny, y’ hear?_ ).

Hastily the glass is returned to the draining board, and then Merlin sprints into his bedroom. Magic. Why hasn’t he thought of it before? With trembling hands he digs out the book – leather-bound, worn with age – his mum gave him when he was seven and too many peculiar things occurred around little Merlin for it to be just a coincidence. Now Merlin flicks through pages of spidery script, past spells of concealment and basic enchantments for resizing objects – he’s studied, of course, but hardly relies on his magic in day-to-day life. Instead it… appears, springs out from nowhere – just as it had in the kitchen – and that’s how Merlin likes it. He is just as human as everyone else, just. Well. Only he comes with a magic touch - literally.

Trigger spells. Charms for cooking. Easy Love Potions. A couple of nasty jinxes he doesn’t want to think about. And – _Tracking Spells_ , the title reads. Hungry eyes rove down the page. A single line of script to memorise, though the pronunciation looks like a bitch…

“I can find him,” Merlin says. His voice is steely. “I can fucking do it and nothing’s going to stop me from getting back my prat,” and with that he picks up the book and tries to familiarise his tongue with the sounds of his saving grace.

Three hours later and he’s out of breath from his headlong pelt downtown. His feet are sore, his hair in disarray, his breaths wheezy in the gloom of the seedy alley he has skidded into, one that reminds him of the crappy American crime films Will is so fond of. In his chest there is a single, final tug of magic: tugging him towards a hulking building with the door – its oxblood paint peeling – oh so slightly ajar.

Nervous, Merlin tries to peer through the windows. The glass is grimy and frosted, glowing from the soft light within but opaque nonetheless. He strains his ears, but there is only the distant traffic and distant voices and the clink of pint glass on pint glass.

He looks up.

Above the door is a broken blockade of brass letters, bolted onto the drab brick:

 _TH  R SI G SUN_.

 

 

 

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    **ೋ**  


 

 


	8. Chapter 8

  **ೋ**

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 **HELLO**  
  
  
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**_February 5 th, 2007_ **

Arthur drums his fingers on the bar to the beat of _Lonely is the Word_ , blaring out of the CD player Old Man K left on the back counter. A sweeping glance over the innards of the _Sun_ reveals no foul play: just business as usual, business that’s picking up as the night draws on and the sky outside fades into an inky black.

He’s got a few offers already – he always does, from girls who flick their hair just-so and angle themselves just right so their cleavage is inches from his face. But Arthur’s not here to fuck, and he turns them down with a grin and a wink and a good twist of charm. And if they pout or lean in closer or flutter lashes slick with mascara, he ramps it up; disarms them a little further (sickened by the ease he plays his part), until they realise he’s Off Limits, No Exceptions.

He fends off Lana for the third night in a row with this performance. A tall girl, willowy, with eyes set slightly too far apart in her face and armed with boobs any straight guy would ogle at unashamedly. She’s on a mission and they both know it – though whether she wants to use Arthur to get his cash, get a good word in with Aredian, or simply for a good fuck (on her part, anyway)…who knows?

“Could be all three,” Arthur mumbles to himself, and he hums, amused, around the butt of a trusty cigarette. Another assessing glance and he spies Lana across the room, picking her way through the tables and chaise lounges towards a regular. Val. Nothing but brawn and arrogance, but a payer nonetheless.

But then Lana stops, midstride. Her head whips to the left. With new purpose she stalks towards the doorway. She will reel him in, make him hers, make him loyal until he showers her with burning kisses and bolts of pleasure and cash; Arthur can read this intent on her face, sees triumph blossoming in her darkening eyes.

He follows her gaze. And when his eyes lock onto her target, his mouth drops open. His cigarette tumbles onto the bar.

Merlin.

Behind Arthur, the CD ends with a _thunk_.

 _Merlin_. Merlin in his denim jacket and glasses and red scarf… emotions thunder into Arthur’s head like a platoon of horses. Relief loosens the tight knot of guilt in his stomach even as Fear seeps into his bones. There is Joy that muddles its way through the growing battleground, too, something that was already foreign in Arthur’s head; but it shot down by Fear, because Aredian will not allow this, and Arthur must play his part.

Still Joy struggles on; writhes on the ground, refusing to die.

So when Lana reaches Merlin, tries to lead him away to a dark corner where they can conduct business, tries to seduce him by moulding her body against his, whispering low and filthy into one of his ridiculous ears… there is Anger. It surges up in a single wave and propels Arthur out from behind the bar; over to silver-tongued Lana and lost, rabbit-eyed Merlin.

Lana spots Arthur first; has the audacity to arch a brow and take his wrist and say to them both, the words dripping with subtext: “Or we could try something a little…different.”

Merlin stares first at Arthur, then at Lana and back again. He opens his mouth but Arthur slashes his protests in two by yanking his wrist from Lana’s claw and biting out the classic “go fuck yourself”. Then he tears Merlin free too and marches him to the bar. Lana screams after them, screams about how Arthur can hardly talk and how she needs the cash like everyone else, and she was only trying to help “their little friend” and why is he such a stuck-up cunt?

Arthur ignores her. He drags Merlin behind the bar and out the back, past the cloakroom with its rusting hooks, past the storeroom with drinks and drugs in ranks and neatly wrapped in plastic. The final door is what used to be Old Man K’s office. Arthur wrenches it open, and once Merlin and he are inside the dim little room he slams the door behind them.

 

• • • • • •

 

Arthur’s torso is heaving. He is turned away from Merlin, palms pressed against the door, forehead resting between them, but his back rises and falls and rises and falls with every raggedy breath.

Merlin hangs back. He can still see Arthur’s eyes, ablaze with fury, when he materialised beside that girl; can still hear his scornful _go fuck yourself_. He still feels the possessiveness of Arthur’s hand around his wrist when he heaved Merlin through the throng of people having… having a good time, and Merlin doesn’t know what to make of it anymore.

Slowly, Arthur turns towards him. The tension in his shoulders leaks away until they slump with defeat. Arthur’s head droops with them, his jaw coming to rest on the collar of the not-date blue button down.

“I’m sorry.”

The words are as soft as the fur of Merlin’s teddy bear Benji; as secret as a stolen kiss in the rain. And then Arthur sags back against the door, tilts his head back, and stares through watery eyes at the ceiling with its smeary stains and greyish paint. There is streetlight shining through the grimy windowpanes to their left, streetlight that probes at Arthur’s pale skin and the tendons in his throat and the strip of collarbone his shirt can’t hide. He looks tired. Old.

Aside from the muffled voices and laughter and moans of the _Sun_ ’s occupants, it is silent.

Merlin can’t bear the silence. Just like when he first saw Arthur at their bench, all that time ago… it reeks of fragility. And still, when Merlin looks at Arthur – looks at this boy in his just-right jeans and the not-date blue button down he feels… chained, bound to him by invisible ribbons.

Because this boy is his. His to protect and befriend and guide and save even though he doesn’t understand any of this and—

“Arth?” Merlin’s voice is no more than a hoarse whisper, but it pulls Arthur’s gaze down from the ceiling and to his own. The ribbons pull tighter. “Arth, I…”

“Don’t say it.” Arthur jerks away from the door and stalks to the window, where the light transforms him from a ghost into a silhouette.

“Say what?”

“That you – about this place – Lana and—” Arthur shakes his head, each jerk short and quick, as if keen to shake off something he doesn’t want to contemplate. “It doesn’t matter,” he says eventually, words bitter, and with that he draws himself to his full height and clasps his hands behind his back – so every line in his body is strong and bold. Merlin’s traitorous brain starts thinking of kings and grand white castles again.

“I was just going to say I missed you,” Merlin says, when he feels like he’s been drowning in silence for too long. “Lots.”

No reply.

Merlin bites his lip. “Why did you stop coming?”, that’s what falls out of his mouth next, but it’s nowhere near as offhand as he intended and Arthur stiffens at the hurt that is buried in the words. He bows his head again; spins on his heel until the light is behind him, tinting his hair and shading the planes of his face.

“I… I had to,” Arthur says. “My boss… I was such an idiot, Merls. He tapped my phone. When I phoned to confirm dinner with you, a copy of the call went straight to his office.” A bitter laugh. “So fucking stupid. He called me out on it. Said there was no fucking hope in hell I was going to get away with it. I wasn’t there to make friends with charitable little shits. I was there to work. He gave me tails after that, more jobs to do…”

Merlin steps forward and curls his hand around Arthur’s forearm. Beneath his fingers he feels Arthur’s pulse, steady but still quick from their journey to safety, and the ribbons tug him closer still.

“S’alright, Arth. I don’t blame you.”

“What do you think?” Arthur asks. Merlin tastes the interlocking fear and curiosity laced between the lines. He holds onto Arthur tighter; says as lightly as he can:

“I think your boss is a twat. And I think that you’re brilliant. You know that, right?”

A tiny smile glimmers on Arthur’s face even though he is looking down at his wrist with something unreadable in his eyes. “You’ve always been too good to me, Merlin.”

“Because I care, idiot.” _Deep breath, Merlin. Deep breath—_ “I care about… about you.”

“Why?”

“Because you don’t deserve this,” Merlin says immediately. “Because you’re my friend. Because you like stupid oranges. Because you make me laugh without trying. Because when _you_ laugh, your eyes light up. Because you didn’t think your birthday was important. Because you put up with my terrible Harry Potter jokes. Because talking to you about anything was so easy. Because of your bloody cigarettes. Because you like my ears. Because you’re brave and selfless and strong and because – because I think I love you.”

Arthur’s gaze flicks back up to Merlin’s. It is dark but Merlin doesn’t miss the disbelief in Arthur’s wide eyes, and so he finishes with a shaky, “because I do love you.”

There is silence for so long that Merlin almost sees Arthur breaking before him. His chest is heaving with those raggedy breaths again, and from somewhere in them comes a desperate “Merlin…”.

“Mm?”

“You can do better. So much better. You know that, right? I—”

“I don’t care.”

Arthur blinks at the steel in Merlin’s words. “You don’t—”

“I don’t understand?” Merlin arches a brow; moves further in until Arthur can count his every eyelash. “I get it better than anyone, Arth. You think you’re the lowest of the low. Some street kid. You do jobs for your boss. Deliveries. Running the bar at a – a brothel. So?”

“I do more than that,” Arthur says, voice cracking halfway through, cheeks reddening as he fumbles with his words. “I – I’m no better than them.” He nods in the direction of the bar. “I…I’m a—”

He is cut off by a finger flying to his lips. “Shush,” Merlin says, before letting his hand fall down to his side. “I know.”

“You – you know?”

“Yeah. I know.” Merlin stares into Arthur’s eyes – they’d be a mirror pair of his own, but Arthur’s are a shade or two lighter and alight with questions, although they do seem… familiar. Not in the sense that they’re Arthur’s eyes; but because Merlin’s seen this same shade of Mediterranean Ocean blue before, set in someone else’s face.

Finally he musters the nerve to speak. “At the _Round Table_. You were a bit drunk, said something ‘bout earning a couple of hundred every night. Good tippers.” He shrugs. “And, well. I’m not stupid. It… it wasn’t hard to work out.”

As soon as the words are free Merlin panics; tries to backtrack (“shit, that’s not what I meant – just that—!”) but Arthur snatches his wrist free and steps backwards once, twice, thrice.

“So it’s obvious I’m a fucking manwhore? Is that it?”

“No! No. I just meant – for that kind of money, you’d have to be doing something. That’s all. I swear I never thought any worse of you.”

It spools from his mouth like thread in a sewing machine, so fast Merlin half-thinks Arthur didn’t catch a word of it. But Arthur’s face softens, just a little: not enough to make Merlin feel at ease, but enough to show it’s forgotten… and for the third time, Merlin watches this face melt into something raw and sad and a little rough at the edges. It is the same expression Arthur wore when his hands slid over his Christmas present, the same face that appeared when Arthur curved his thumb over his mother’s knuckles—

 ( _“You like Avril Lavigne?”_

_“Hm?”_

_“You were humming. The one that’s on the radio all the time – he was a skater boy, she said see you later boy…”_

_“You know the words?”_

_“It’s on the radio all the time.”)_

—and Merlin’s heart stutters in his chest.

“Shit.” A startled beat of silence. “Shit!” Merlin says again, eyes widening. Arthur is looking blankly at Merlin with his blue eyes.

Yvette’s eyes.

The eyes of the boy who sat by her gurney in his grey t-shirt and held her hand and talked to her until his voice was hoarse, _her son’s eyes oh Christ on a bike_ —

“You’re Arthur Pendragon,” Merlin breathes, and now it’s Arthur’s turn to widen his eyes into circles. His mouth drops open. For a heartbeat he stares at Merlin, shock and fear warring on his face. Then from his lips comes a hoarse “no, you’ve got it wrong, I’m – I’m no one”, and he steps back against the desk and locks his fingers around the dusty wood, as if holding on for dear life.

“You’re the guy in the grey t-shirt who used to visit Yvette de Bois at St. Julian’s Hospital on Albion Street,” Merlin says, eerily calm despite the excitement bubbling within. “Aren’t you? I _knew_ I recognised you when we first met, I just couldn’t put my finger on it—”

“Merlin—”

“—but your mum’s been lucid for about a week now, and when I first saw her I thought ‘she looks just like Arthur’.” Merlin starts to pace, head down, hands folded in the small of his back. “Of course she does. You’re her son. That’s why you speak French so well. And why you hate MPs, ‘cause your dad is a prick—”

“Merlin!” Arthur says again, and this time he sounds so lost and afraid Merlin stops pacing, stops talking, unfolds his hands and reaches out for him. Arthur is shaking – because of the tension in his arms or just the onslaught of emotion, Merlin doesn’t know, and shame floods into his gut. From day one he’s always told himself not to push too hard, not to ask too much, and yet…

“Arth?” A careful hand falls back onto the blonde’s wrist. “I’m sorry, I didn’t think – I rarely do, and…”

Merlin shrugs, even though Arthur’s eyes are scrunched shut. They stand together in the silence, the awful fucking silence for God knows how long; Merlin drifting in his head, only half-listening to the distant thrum of noise back out front now he is suddenly conscious of his proximity to Arthur, the – the sheer _closeness_ they share after all the time apart, after he’d blurted out the Three Words, and he is petrified.

Arthur opens his eyes; exhales slowly. The silence watches, as cruel as ever, until it is banished by Arthur’s husky “she’s… she’s awake? My mum?”

“Yeah.” Merlin gives his wrist a little squeeze. “She came round a few weeks ago. We’re keeping her in until she gets her strength back.” Arthur nods, but he still looks dazed; as if he’s just been torn out of a nightmare, out of sleep, and hasn’t yet worked out where he is.

“She… she’s asked about you,” Merlin adds. Arthur’s eyes snap up to meet his, the hunger for detail all too clear against the surprise and relief and uncertainty. “At the time, I – well, I didn’t know she meant you. I said I hadn’t seen you in years. That one day it was only a dark-haired girl visiting from time to time… your sister, I suppose,” and at that Arthur presses his lips together and nods. “Morgie to you. I think – I think your mum got the story out of her, though. Why you weren’t turning up. And she was furious, Arth, whatever the reason was for you having to live on the street. For days she’d mutter French expletives under her breath, I caught _merde_ and _salaud_ more than once, and if she wasn’t doing that she was telling me in English how big a cunt her ex-husband was.”

At that, Arthur huffs out a little laugh. Merlin snorts. In seconds they’re cackling like hyenas. Merlin is doubled over, laughing so hard he can barely draw breath; but Arthur throws his head back, mouth pulled into a grin, eyes creasing at their corners, and the streetlight catches the gold of his hair and eyelashes and the white of his skin all over again and this time, Arthur is irresistible.

With the detached feeling Merlin remembers from being stoned as a teen, he slips his hand off Arthur’s wrist and slides it around Arthur’s waist. The denim of their jeans is brushing; their hipbones barely an inch apart when Arthur’s head falls back down and Merlin murmurs “you never said if you loved me back” before pressing his lips onto Arthur’s.

At first Arthur doesn’t respond to the kiss and from a rickety perch in the back of his head Merlin panics. Didn’t he have an ounce of self-control left? First running to find Arthur, then blurting out _I love you_ , now fucking accosting him—

—but when Merlin makes the touch of his mouth gentle and tender, ready to pull back, Arthur’s arms wind around his torso, press him closer, and the kiss morphs back into something hungry and longing. Arthur leans back, or maybe Merlin leans forward, but when they pause for air Arthur’s spine is digging into the desk and the gap between the crotches of their jeans is nonexistent. Merlin is so dizzy with want and _Arthur, Arthur, ARTHUR_ that when he slams his lips back down he only catches half of Arthur’s mouth. Arthur moans, twists his head a little, uses one of his hands to adjust Merlin’s head, and they start afresh.

It isn’t until Merlin grinds down, or maybe Arthur grinds up – as if desperate to mould them into one whole – that the haze in Arthur’s eyes starts to fade. He tenses; tries to draw back, is stopped by the desk. The warmth in Merlin’s body ices over at the shock returning to Arthur’s face.

Hastily, he yanks his hands from under Arthur’s warm weight and pushes himself back up with a grunt. He’s as stiff as a board and stumbles back a few paces; wishes the tent in his trousers to bloody well vanish.

Arthur props himself on his elbows. His chest is heaving; his lips red and swollen.

“Um.” Merlin tries not to stare at the tent in _Arthur’s_ jeans. “I, um—”

“S’not you,” Arthur pants, with a wave of his hand that could mean anything. “Just… I can’t. I can’t stop thinking about why I’m… about when my dad found out.”

“That you were gay?”

“Yeah.” Arthur shifts on the desk and stares vacantly at his shoes. “He found me – found me making out with Lee from my rugby team. He wasn’t supposed to be home until midnight – my dad, I mean – he’d been in Dubai on a business trip, but…”

Arthur trails off, as if the threads of his story are too frayed to weave together; and cold anger erupts in Merlin’s gut, opens his mouth; unearths the words “so he kicked you out” from his larynx.

“Yeah.” Arthur swallows. “Yeah. First he got rid of Lee. Then he started on me. How I was an abomination. A disgrace. How no one was to know what I was. I told him mum already knew, I – I said I couldn’t help being who I was. And when it was obvious to him I wasn’t going to crawl into the closet to spare his reputation he gave me five minutes to pack and get the fuck out.”

“But love is love,” that’s what rockets out of Merlin’s mouth, and it’s so damn corny a blush heats up his cheeks. A glance from Arthur, and the tips of his ears turn scarlet too.

“Yeah, well.” Arthur runs a hand through his hair. “As far as my dad’s concerned, I can’t love right,” and when he looks back down at his shoes his eyes linger sadly on the bulge in his jeans.

“Arth—”

“I think you should leave, Merlin.” Arthur’s voice is quiet but firm. “Now.”

“But we need to talk about this. Us.” The word _us_ sounds so much smaller than all the others, even though it’s the one with the most weight, the most importance, the most _significance_ and Merlin is sickened by the way he downplayed it. “And your mum, she wants to see you. She talks about you all the time ‘cause she’s been scared for you ever since Morgana told her you were thrown out. She thinks she’s lost you—”

“She has. I’ve been lost for, what, five years?”

“But if you went back—”

“I’m a whore.” Arthur’s voice is flat. “I fuck people for money. I run the bar in a brothel. I don’t have a GCSE to my name, let alone A Levels or a degree.”

“Oh, please. Like she’d turn you away. She’s your _mother_ —”

“So?” Arthur propels himself off the desk with a push of his arms. The streetlight shifts again and now the blonde is half-shadow, half-light. “You think that’ll make it all fucking better? If anything, it makes it worse. She didn’t give a shit about me being gay. But knowing that I fucked for money? Knowing that I dealt drugs and booze to kids to help them get along, _right here_ in this building? Knowing that I once sucked off some punk for twenty quid? Knowing that I used to pickpocket around Camden, or beg on street corners like a fucking dog?”

“You didn’t have a choice—”

“Yes I did.” Arthur’s words are drenched in conviction. “I could’ve gone to Morgana. I could’ve gone to Kay. I could’ve broken into my mum’s flat and lived there. I could’ve turned down Aredian’s offer for work, stayed with El and Ellie and Wayne before they all went to shit. And I didn’t, ‘cause I’m a dumb fuck.”

Arthur sucks in a deep breath; sags back against the desk. “She might be my mum,” he says steadily, “but she can’t forgive me. I can’t ask that of her. ‘Sides, what she doesn’t know can’t hurt her, and she has Morgana, anyway—”

“You really are a dumb fuck,” Merlin says, and he sounds almost fond. “What she doesn’t know will hurt her the most. You realise that, right?”

No answer.

“And there’s no way I can convince you to get the fuck over yourself?” Merlin adds. He sounds harsher than he intended but when Arthur bridles, stung by the scorn in the words, Merlin can’t help but like the satisfaction that tears through his veins.

“D’you know, I thought you were better than this,” Merlin says, eyes fixed on his Arthur: the clean lines of his body, the sinew in his forearms, the rumpled not-date blue button down, the haunted eyes, the swollen lips, stubborn jaw, Roman nose… the shadows, the light tinting the ends of his hair amber. He watches until he is sure the sight is branded into his memory. Then he says, with more calmness than he feels:

“I’ll let myself out.”

When the door clicks shut behind him, Arthur buries his face in his hands.

 

• • • • • •

 

**_February 8 th, 2007_ **

The last few nights haven’t been kind to him. Sleep hovered out of reach, twirling above him like a dreamcatcher despite the weariness in his bones. Aredian’s clientele dropped easily into their dreams, next to him on the bed; slipped away with an arm slung over Arthur’s waist, its meaning is all too clear: _mine_.

It’s the shame that pushes sleep away from him – that’s what he tells himself, anyway, until he is lying awake at 3AM in the dark and the only thing in his head is Merlin, Merlin, _Merlin_. Merlin and his denim jacket, Merlin and his huge thick-framed glasses, Merlin and his red scarf, Merlin and his sandwiches, Merlin in the _Sun_ kissing him, tasting him, clinging to him like he was the only oxygen left in the world…

“Merlin who loves me,” Arthur murmurs. He doesn’t know whether to smile or cry. To be loved… hadn't Arthur longed for a bond like the one he shared with Merlin since his first night on the street, when his mum was gone and his dad was gone and his friends were gone?

It was inevitable, really, that he’d screw it up. He’s never been known for his tact. Being the dumb fuck he is, he let Merlin go, even though Merlin had wanted him. _Him_. Not Arthur Pendragon, the young, arrogant kid who believed everything in life would fall into place should he wish it; but Arthur King, the boy in the body of a broken man, the boy stuck on a shitty Ferris Wheel of fuck-sleep-work-fuck-breathe, the boy whose middle name could easily have been Cynicism, for all the positive things that come out his mouth. _That’s_ who Merlin wanted, and it filled Arthur to the brim with terror and delight at the same time.

And sometimes… sometimes Arthur looked at Merlin, and there would be a gentle tug in the centre of his chest. Like there was an invisible string linking them together, joining them, binding them. Arthur doesn't believe in destiny - he never has. But when he pairs the word with Merlin or the invisible string, it just… _fits_.

Still, he let Merlin go.

_He let go._

 

• • • • • •

 

By morning he is restless. His client has gone, his fee has been paid, but his body is haywire; his mind awhirl. _Merlin had wanted him_. And Arthur panicked like a fucking pro because of his dad and his bigoted opinions, opinions he still lives under even though his dad is no longer around to care.

And then there is his mum. Sat in a hospital room, days from being freed back into the outside world… she’ll be as beautiful as ever, Arthur knows. Just as kind. Just as generous. Just as forgiving, surely? And he’s made a thousand mistakes, a million even, but surely – surely she’d understand. She couldn’t not understand—

Arthur reaches for his duffel bag; rummages inside until his fingertips brush across paper. He eases a copy of _The Guardian_ , yellowy and thinning it has been read so much. It is dated December 16th, 2002. He ignores the cover page – he’s read it over and over and over again in the past, traced the headline **PENDRAGON’S MARRIAGE AT END** with his thumb – and flips to the spread on page three.

There is his mum. Arm in arm with Uther at a charity dinner; giving a speech at the opening of one of her new stores, her golden hair piled atop her head in an elaborate braid; laughing as she throws her wedding bouquet into the crowd of ladies. Uther is holding her free hand; yhey look so carefree, so happy. Arthur wonders when it started to fall apart. When had the rows started? When had Uther taken on extra hours at the office to stay out of his wife’s way? When had birthdays become a little too forced; Christmases a careful façade?

When had they stopped loving each other?

Arthur stares at these photos, at the proof that there once was something undeniable between his mum and his dad, and suddenly feels very small. He runs gentle fingers over the fading ink; over his mum’s white wedding gown, her unbloodied head, the huge rings dotted across her hands, the joined hands of his parents and his mum’s braided hair and the laugh lines at the corners of her eyes.

Then he shuts the paper, folds it back up, and slips it into his bag.

Arthur looks around his room. It is still a blank canvas: no posters, no fresh paint. He stands, heaves his duffel bag onto the bed, and stuffs in his alarm clock, the three shirts slung over a chair, his blue BELIEVE IN YOURSELF bobble hat. From under the bed he drags out two big square boxes, packed with all the money he’s been able to put aside – despite paying for food and his share of hot water and his room and wi-fi, though he never bought a laptop because Aredian would hack into it somehow and the temptation to look up his family and friends would be too much, would hurt too much.

Arthur opens the first box and squeezes as much cash as he can into his bag, twenty pound notes bound into wads of two hundred with cheap elastic bands. By the next box he is running out of room, and runs to get his parka; stuffs its pockets full, inside and outside, because if his mum takes him back in he wants to be able to help. If she turns him away, he can find somewhere else to go. It can't be harder than it was when he was penniless - with this money, he could make it to France, easy. And maybe his cash didn't come to him through conventional means but it was still earned and it is still his and Aredian isn’t going to see a fucking note of it.

Arthur freezes.

Oh God _. I’m actually doing this_. He’s throwing away his room, his jobs, his obligations…everything. Fear slams deep into his stomach – but then Arthur thinks of Merlin, and his mum, and Aredian's face when he realises Arthur's done a runner, and he can breathe again.  _Try to fail but don't fail to try_ , he tells himself. It had been pinned to the noticeboard in the Sports Dept. of his old school in red capitals and Arthur could never get it out of his head.

Boxes empty, bag and parka full, he scrambles to put on his shoes. Then he slips into his coat, slings his bag over his shoulder.

He leaves without looking back.

The corridor is chilly, the strip lights as unforgiving as ever. Arthur fishes his phone from his jean pocket. His trembling fingers are slow on the keypad, even though he is ajitter with nervous energy. Thirty seconds later he stabs **SEND** ; breaks into a run down the hateful corridor, down the stairs, out into the street and the crisp air and _freedom_.

 

• • • • • •

 

On the other side of the city, at the hospital on Albion St., Merlin’s phone beeps.

 _I’m coming_.

 

• • • • • •

 

 _Snap snap snap_. Past the frumpy old lady to his left. Past the little girls who stare, awed, as he powers past, and their mother, who shoots him a filthy look. Up, up, up the stairs between the two escalators, so fast his feet barely touch the steps, so fast it’s like he’s flying—

 _Snap snap snap_ , his flapping sole sings when he leaps to the top of the staircase; plummets through the echoey, tiled walkways with their flashy ads for _Wicked_ and the V&A and Coldplay’s upcoming tour. At the ticket barrier he fumbles with his ticket; remembers at the last second to pull it out before he steps out onto the other side. The man on duty narrows his eyes at him, but Arthur is too on edge to do anything but blush, flap his hands in one of his _this could mean anything_ gestures, and hurry away.

He bursts onto the street. It is drizzling. The pavement is slick with rain, but he doesn’t dare break into a sprint. It would be too easy to skid, to slip, to fall flat on his face and knock himself out like he had once in a rugby match. No: Arthur sets off at a brisk walk – _snap snap snap_ – with his duffel bag bouncing on his back, and thinks it is fitting that when he left this place, it was raining too.

He passes dinky cafés and old bookshops and estate agents, a jewellery shop with a million pounds worth of diamonds on display in the window, and at least six Starbucks before he realises just how close he is. Up ahead of him is Barclay’s; and set in its eastern wall is the ATM Arthur used all those years ago, the piece of shit that gloated he had _£0000.00_ to his name.

He stalks past it with his head bowed and only dares to look up when the pavement beneath him becomes a kerb. He is stood on the edge of crossroads, a red man glowering at him from across the street. Warning him away, almost.

But even though it is eerily still and Arthur is wet and cold and afraid, he can’t turn back now. He cranes his neck, slowly spins in a circle until he sees a tired little sign nailed up high on the side of Barclay’s.

 **ALBION STREET**.

For a single moment Arthur panics. Then his feet start to move. They guide his shaking body up the gloomy road until he is stood outside another sign, this one brighter and cleaner than the other. **ST. JULIAN’S PRIVATE HOSPITAL** , it says in a gold, serif font. Or maybe the font is gold because of the two lamps bolted to its upper corners and angled to illuminate… oh, God, he can’t do this. He can’t do this.

 _Yes you can, you prat,_ a voice in his head whispers back. It sounds so Merlin-esque Arthur nearly smiles; except there is a golden, stately medical establishment before him and he looks like a drowned rat. What if he’s missed visiting time? What if his mum doesn’t want him back? Will she even know who he is? And what if Merlin didn’t get his text – he had thrown his phone at a wall and watched it shatter before he got on the tube, in case Aredian could track him – and isn’t here? What if he got it but left anyway?

Arthur tries to swallow past the lump in his throat. _Please, God. Please_ , he directs at the heavens, and even though he’s never believed in Him it gives him strength enough to dredge up his mum’s face in mind’s eye; strength enough to walk up the path, up the steps into a pretty little porch, and open the door to the reception.

Inside it is stiflingly warm. There are some leather sofas to his left and a café to his right, one that reminds him of Café Nero because of its dark, brooding décor. The luxury surrounding Arthur does nothing to help his nerves; the aroma of coffee and chocolate gateau is still overpowered by the stench of disinfectant. He hardly blends in, either. He pictures himself in his too-big parka with the paper poppy he still hasn’t taken off (even though Rememberance Day was three months ago), with matted hair, a gaunt face, the stupid _snap, snap, snap_ of his shoe accompanying his every step, and Arthur wants to vanish into thin air—

Too late. The receptionist has seen him.

He walks to the desk. _Snap, snap, snap_.

“Hello.” Her smile makes Arthur think of feral children. “How may I help you… _sir_?”

“I’m here to see Yvette de Bois.” He meant to sound confident – cocky, even, but the words scratch against his throat and he just sounds tired.

“And… you are?” Her gaze roves up and down all six foot three of him. “Miss de Bois is to be visited by family only. _Unrelated_ persons must be authorised by her before visiting, so if you give me your name, I’ll call upstairs and che—”

“Oh, fuck off, Viv,” says a voice from behind Arthur, and then Merlin is there: resting a hand in the small of Arthur’s back and looking down at Viv the receptionist with disdain. “He is family and I’m going to take him up to see his mum right now.”

With that Merlin pulls Arthur away from a spluttering Viv and through a set of swing doors.

“Sorry ‘bout that,” Merlin says. “Viv is a nutter. And I’ve been waiting for you since I got your text, but my bladder got the better of me.” He pulls a face. “Wait, maybe that was a bit TMI… hey, Arth. You alright?”

Arthur can’t do more than nod. Tears well up in his eyes, spurred on by God knows what – his nerves, the stress, the fear that Merlin had gone… he’s a wreck, a wrecked boat on a voyage to unknown waters and all he knows for sure is that he has never wanted his mum more in his life because she’ll anchor him and—

—oh, God, when did Merlin embrace him? When did Merlin start hushing him with gentle hands and feather-soft words? When did he start sobbing into the shoulder of Merlin’s scrubs like Morgana had sobbed into his after reading _The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas_?

“’M sorry.” Arthur’s chest is heaving; his eyes are blurry with tears. “I just…”

“Shush, now…”

“I love you too, Merlin. I’m sorry I d-d-didn’t say it before but… but I love you I love you I love you, yeah?”

“I know.” Merlin presses a kiss to Arthur’s forehead. “I _know_ , you idiot.”

They stand there, locked in each other’s arms, until Arthur’s breathing is slow and regular again. Then he disentangles himself from Merlin’s gangly limbs; scrubs at his eyes with the heel of a palm.

“Better?” Merlin says. Arthur nods. Merlin takes his hand and guides him to the lift, and they are speeding up to the third floor when Arthur finds the guts to ask, “how did you find me? At the _Sun_.”

Merlin holds up a hand and wiggles his fingers. “Magic touch,” he says with a wink. Arthur blinks, but before he can speak Merlin has pressed a finger to his lips like he had in Old Man K’s office. “Not yet. Later.”

Pause.

“Unless this… unless it changes things?”

Merlin's voice is barely a whisper, and he starts to shrink into himself, eyes clouding over with hurt.

“No.” Arthur scrabbles for Merlin’s hand. “I mean…you’re not evil, Merlin. Yeah? You’re one of the kindest people I’ve ever met. I trust you. And whatever my d – I mean, whatever Uther thinks about… about magic, I don't think you'd hurt me.” He swallows; adds hoarsely, "I don't think you could."

The lift jerks to a halt. “It means a lot to hear you say that.” Merlin says quietly, and before the doors slide open he gives Arthur’s hand a squeeze.

The corridor is the same carpeted, cream-walled walkway Arthur remembers; the carpet just as thick. His feet sink into it with every step, muffling the flapping sole on his shoe. Above their heads is a plastic sign with **ROOMS 1401 – 1419** stamped on it in white, with an arrow pointing towards the ceiling. Dead ahead.

Arthur clutches Merlin’s hand tighter.

In less than a minute they are outside Room 1415. Through the window Arthur sees the yellowy glow of the bedside light painted on the walls and the end of the gurney, but no more.

“Ready?” Merlin whispers, eyes scouring Arthur's ashen face. The ribbons tug at both their chests; reminding them of their bond, and in that second Arthur knows he would do anything for Merlin - because without him, Arthur is no one. Incomplete. So he lets go of Merlin's hand, and stands tall, and whispers back, “ready.”

Merlin smiles at him, eyes filled with the pride Arthur once would have killed to see in Uther's. Then he knocks ( _rap rappity rap rap_ ) and, without waiting for a reply, swings the door open wide.

“Miss de Bois?” Merlin says, and Arthur just knows his smile has blossomed into that ridiculous grin of his. “There’s someone here to see you.”

Merlin steps neatly to the side. 

For a moment, Arthur stares at Yvette and Yvette stares at him, her hands flying to her mouth whilst Arthur bites his lip. But then she is laughing, spreading her arms wide; and when he drops his bag and falls into their sanctum, his mother, oh thank God his _mother_ cards her delicate hands through his wet hair and murmurs, “oh, Arthur. Je te tiens, mon trésor. Je suis ici _._ ”  
  


_I’ve got you, my treasure._

__

_I am here._

 

 

* * *

****ೋ** **

_“…if you be my boat, I’ll be your sea;_   
_a depth of pure blue just to probe curiosity._   
_Ebbing, and flowing, and pushed by a breeze…_   
_I live to make you free.”_   
_—Gregory and the Hawk, Boats and Birds_   
**  
**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>   
>  Thank you to all of you who have left kudos or comments, subscribed to or bookmarked this fic. It truly means the world to me -- because without your support, I would not have been able to finish this story. I can only hope it has been as enjoyable for you to read as it has been for me to write it.
> 
>  
> 
> Final feedback would be greatly appreciated. ♥  
> 


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